Finding this hard to complete in Revit?

[kenmarcus]

I am finding it hard to believe but I might have found something that can't be completed in Revit so I am posting this so that hopefully someone can provide a solution. We have also looked at other software products to create the sweep and/or roof separately and join back together in Revit but have not had any luck. So if any one knows of a another program that would allow us to create this, please let me know.

Here is the issue, we are trying to add the attached roof sweep profile to the edge of the entire roof but have not been successful. As you will see once you open the roof project, it is a pretty complex roof so adding a roof sweep to it that follows the entire exterior of the roof perfectly, has been even more of a challenge.
To create the roof we started with a mass using a Solid Swept Blend and cut away using void extrusion, then used the Roof by Face to add a roof and this is were we remain. We tried using the host sweep/roof fascia, which did not work. We have also tried using a curtain system by face, which will get us close but again fails to produce the proper end results. We can re-create the roof using the curtain system by face, using a 5' x 5' grid so that we get a pretty accurate recreation of the roof. We then can add a basic rectangular curtain wall mullion to the exterior edge to sweep the roof which sweeps the roof properly but we having a difficult time getting it in the correction location. Since we want this to be a roof sweep we need the sweep on the office edge of the roof not the inside edge.The issue with the curtain system by face is that when we add the custom profile to the mullion, some of the mullions are reversed and we want the mullion to be in the inside edge of the roof but the custom profile will not allow us to offset it, move the placement or flip the direction of the mullion. The main need for the roof sweep profile is that we need to be able to cut sections in any location and see the proper roof edge using the correct profile.

Any ideas, suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated

[patricks]

Wow, that's a crazy-lookin' roof right there! It would be so easy to just pick the path to make the sweep, but it won't let you pick any of the curved edges created by the void, only the straight edges. What a bummer. :(

I'm not sure how I would do it.

[aaronrumple]

You can pick curved edges. However they have to be in a 2D plane. These are like 3D Polylines in AutoCAD. You'll have to model this in another software.

Even in 3D Studio you would need to use banking in a loft to get it right.

(...no contractor around here can build that twisting fascia.)

[kenmarcus]

Any suggestions on a piece of software that might work to create this? We were thinking that it might be able to be built in Inventor, not sure if that will work?

by the way, this is for a project in China so maybe they will be successful in building it.

[patricks]

heh if they can build the Bird's Nest I'm sure they could build that! ;)

[aaronrumple]

Inventor is probably the software that has the best chance at building this shape.

This is actually more difficult than the birds nest in terms of geometry. It was a pretty straight forward Boolean operation with big shapes. Small inaccuracies are not visible or a detriment to the overall building performance.

The tolerances on this fascia will need to be much tighter for both look and water tightness.

[vgonzales]

I would recommend a NURBS modeler like Rhino-www.rhino3d.com or maybe MOI-www.moi3D.com. Both tools have a two rail sweep command. You pick the curve to sweep and then select the two rails where the profile curve needs to follow with several options on how it is swept. Both porgrams have a limited save demo for download.