Curtain system with tapered grid

[FlipperNic]

Hi all,

First time poster but long time lurker needs help. Totally stuck on this one..

I massed a building that looks like a wedge, or pyramid, with two vertical diagonal walls and then a sloping front. Attaching a curtain system by face on the large front is not a problem but when I do the same on the side walls I can't get the horizontal grid to be level, it tapers with the slope? Can anyone shed some light? Besides being ugly it makes it impossible to insert doors.

[jeffh]

You can take a look at this blog post for some pointers on creating a curtain system on a triangular shaped mass. it may help you resolve the issues you are having.

http://buildz.blogspot.com/2009/06/rationalizing-panels.html

[FlipperNic]

Thanks Jeff, that's more or less what I want to accomplish, but I can't see how I can apply his particular solution. He's starting out from a surface, which he re-created, whereas I'm coming from a massing that I can't change easily.

I see what he's saying though, and my grid follows the uv coordinates on my four sided face, but if that is the way it has to work why don't I have a problem on the front surface? That one tapers to the top corner.

[FlipperNic]

Well, I sure picked a great day to post my first question. Let me just assure everyone that I've been following the board for quite some time, did an extensive search before giving up and starting a thread, and my interest in solving this is very genuine. (Now, I may be thick headed in terms of not understanding the problem but...)

[bregnier]

Are the sides of the building perfect planes? If they are warped even a little bit then revit will interpolate between the angles instead of using a u/v grid. how was the mass created? Can you post only the mass to the site?

I too only joined last month after lurking for years... welcome to the community!

[bregnier]

Attached is a mass I made by extruding a triangle and then dragging one edge down vertically.

When I applied the curtain systems some of them were at the wrong angle overall but they were all rectangular grids. AFAIK you can't change the edge that revit decides defines the u/v grid, only rotate manually from that point. I think that this extra step of rotating grids could be eliminated by using a void to cut a rectangular extrusion instead of dragging edges.

I am fairly certain there is no way of changing from angled grids to rectangular ones without changing the underlying mass. This doesn't mean deleting and starting over - if you get the sides back in plane and then delete and re-apply the curtain systems it should work.

[FlipperNic]

Thanks for the welcome!

The file is getting big and the massing was created in-place, but I basically sketched a triangle with the needed dimensions, extruded it and then lowered two of the corners (it has a 6' front plate under the loped plane). It's a possibility, but I doubt those two sides are out of whack.

I did remember something else though. The initial model was created by someone else, but using the same method, and there the grid is the other way around (picture enclosed). I'm starting to wonder if these sides affect each other. Neither grids are set to continuous though.

[FlipperNic]

Breigner, I wrote a response to you before I saw your last, but that is spot on what I want. You say you did that by lowering one edge of an extruded triangle mass? That's exactly how I did it as well.

I'm tempted to try creating the triangle by having a void cutting it instead, but if you can get the result by doing it the same way I did I want to pursue that first, given the time invested. It can't matter that I did In-Place can it?

[bregnier]

Here's a quick way to check - delete the curtain system and just apply a simple wall to the face. When you select it, if it is totally in plane then you should get the option to edit the profile in the "modify wall" tab. If you don't get that option, then it's warped.

My example was an in-place mass.

[FlipperNic]

Unbelievable, you're right. Well, not unbelievable that you're right but when I check the coordinates of the corners on the little front panel they are ever so little off. I think I actually did mess a little with that 6' high front panel.

I must admit that I'm on thin ice now, how would I correct that? I can isolate the massing and then update to face or host, but how would I precisely position the corners? I guess I'm looking for a way to enter absolute coordinates for the corner vertices a la 3ds Max.

[bregnier]

Make some reference planes in a plan view and then snap the point to the intersection of those planes.

[twiceroadsfool]

Draw reference lines on the Work Plane for where the triangles edges "should" be. Then when you move the points, if youre very careful, you will see the reference line turn blue when you are in alignment with it. Word to the wise though, which DIRECTION you move the point first does matter.

(If this makes sense) Its been my experience youll have to move the point three times. Move it once, and it will snap to the ref line in one direction. Move it in the perp. direction to get it ON the ref line, but now its off slightly in the first direction again. Move it a third and its all set.

I just went through this today with a trainee over the same thing (non-orthagonal Curtain grids) and we were able to resolve it in short order.

[FlipperNic]

First off, thanks to both of you for great suggestions, no doubt the way to do it.

With that said I didn't really succeed. It's kind of hard to see the corner point and snap to the ref line in a plan view with the vertices being on top of each other. I felt they snapped, I checked if from different angles, but it was no go from revit and I never got to the point where I was allowed to edit a basic wall profile that I placed. Placing a curtain wall on the face gave the same result as before as well.

I will continue trying, have a feeling it's not the last time I'll bump into this.

[bregnier]

I know this is not very helpful at this juncture, but I almost always make masses using reference lines and voids, to allow complete after-the-fact control over the resulting geometry. It can lead to a couple of extra steps but it also allows you to easily modify the forms later by simply pulling on the reference lines. Masses made with reference lines can also have their extrusions "locked" to prevent this sort of occurence.

Remember that when you tab to the point you're trying to control, hitting space bar will switch between local and global ucs. This can be helpful. You might also try using align on the edges, but be warned this can affect the edges "around the corner" from the one you are aligning - you'll probably get a "slightly out of plane" error if this happens.

I'm really hoping that someone with more massing experience will eventually collect all of the various bits of advice about the new massing tools and make some sort of best practices document - I've had to model most things three times over to get what I want.