how do you make a circular slide?

[Kaotik]

I'm modeling a kid's daycare center and i modelled a little jungle gym they wanted but i couldn't figure out how to create the slide part. its just one of those regular circular slides that wraps around a pole. its about 8 feet high and does a complete 360 from start to finish. any help is greatly appreciated!

sincerely,
Brian Andresen

[patricks]

There's probably a way to do it with the stair tool, using a profile of the slide cross section set as a center stringer, with no outside stringers. I'm not sure how you would get rid of the treads and risers, though.....

If you're trying to model it as a family itself, I'm not real sure there....

[Kaotik]

i did do that-i got the rest of the family done and then did the "stair" next to it inside the project. That works and thanks for the work around- but i was hoping there might be a way to get that into the family somehow.

[patricks]

That's a toughie... I remember in Form-Z there is a spiral tool that allows you to take some profile and spin it around an axis, and also offset the profile as it moves along the axis.

Would be nice if we have more solid modelling tools.

[sbrown]

Are you actually geting paid to model the slide? If not I wouldn't do it. If yes, then you could fake it pretty well with a combination of circular stairs with a profile of the slide for the railing, then turn off the stair treads and risers.

[patricks]

Can you just turn off treads and risers?

Another idea I had woulld be to use a combination of solid revolves and voids to get an edge that goes down in a spiral shape, and then use that edge to define the path of a sweep with the sweep profile being the slide cross-section.

[sbrown]

Yes, just turn off the stair category and leave the railings turned on. You can also make this as an external project and link it so you can still have your other stairs on.

[mschroeder]

... and then use that edge to define the path of a sweep with the sweep profile being the slide cross-section.

Unless you want a flat slide you'll need to wait for the next release. Revit cannot sweep a curved shape on a curved path. :cry:

[mschroeder]

... fake it pretty well with a combination of circular stairs with a profile of the slide for the railing, then turn off the stair treads and risers.

I've used this technique to model drain piping and inverts. Instead of a stair I used a tiny ramp, mainly because you can define a slope (draining 1/8" per 1'). Then a handrail for pipe that is negatively offset the same amount as it's diameter. What was really cool is then you can drop spot elevations right on the pipe in a 3D view and then collision detect structure with rails to highlight the pinch points.

Strayed a bit from the slide topic here.

[Rols]

Wouldn't it be the same as a curved ramp, for which I've seen several tutorials??

[patricks]

*sigh* wish I had the time to try some of the ideas listed here.... but I waste too much time just reading AUGI in the first place :p

[mschroeder]

Wouldn't it be the same as a curved ramp, for which I've seen several tutorials??

Circular is OK but anything else is not.

Here's what you get...