Dome Roof - Getting CA to literally bend to my will! HELP!

[TSarantopulos]

I'm working on a refugee project where a client of mine has come up with a system for refugee camp to erect simple dome structures for habitation.  I'm frustratingly trying to get CA to create the shape of the structure to reflect what my clients system shows which is a oblate ellipsoid which provides better headroom and a lower ceiling at the peak.  I'm close but its not exact.  I've attached images of what I've done, which looks like a half a perfect sphere and what it's really supposed to look like. If anyone can get the dome of the roof to follow more of an oblate ellipsoid shape, I would greatly appreciate any insight on how to get the program to do this.  The best I can figured out how to do is a half sphere.

trialdome.plan

[Alaskan_Son]

There are a few ways to achieve that end result in Chief.  I don't have a lot of time or I might make a quick video but here are a few things you might try...

 

- Molding polylines.  Basically draw the contour of your dome shape to create a molding profile. Then draw your circular molding polyline(s) using the dome shaped molding(s).

 

- 2D Faces and the revolve tool.  

 

- A half sphere converted to a

symbol and then resized. 

 

- I'm away from my computer so I can't test this right now but I think there is a way to use the sphere tool.  I'll look into it when I get back to the office if I remember.

 

- Molding polylines and the Face tool.  This one is too complicated to describe in a simple text post (all I have time for right now) but in short, draw a series of circular elevation contours using molding polylines to create a sort of topographical framework and then draw the surface using the face tool which can snap to those molding polylines.  

 

- Use the terrain tools and

convert to symbol.  This could be an effective method but it's also pretty complicated as it typically requires creating several iterations of the terrain and then combining them into a single symbol.

 

- Roof planes.  Again...this is another pretty complicated method.  You might consider contacting/hiring Yusef if you want to go this route.   He's done quite a bit of pretty complex roof systems...more so than anyone else I know of anyway.  In short though you need to start with some base roof planes then build a series of additional planes to fill it all on.  

 

For most all of the above methods it will be important to fully understand the geometry you're working with and to start with all the correct dimensions to avoid having to redo things.  Hope that helps.

[MarkMc]

Perhaps the easiest of Michael's suggestions. This was done with molding polyline- I used regular polygon based because your images appeared that way.
I might be inclined to use one of his other methods depending on what the actual construction method. I remember back when I was in school someone had made domes as refugee housing down in South America with a machine that extruded foam as it rotated. (turned out to be a problem with water and vermin that one though)..

 

Domes.plan

[ShaneK]

Post a picture please.

[ShaneK]

Roof planes

[glennw]

Using the dome symbol from the library and stretching the height.

 

Or this is a circular terrain

 

[Alaskan_Son]

Made it back to the office and decided to make a somewhat quick video on the subject...

 

 

I didn't go over all the methods I mentioned but I went over a couple that I could pretty easily illustrate using the sample plan provided.  It's worth noting that using roof planes has a lot of benefits in that the individual planes can be modified as necessary to further customize the roof. 

 

Not something I went over in the video, but after giving it a little more consideration, I think solids would probably be my method of choice. You could use the Revolve tool or you could create a series of solids using any number of other methods (even using a similar method to what I used to create the roof planes in the video). This would give you even more flexibility for future modifications to the structure. 

[chief58]

Michael frantastic lesson, thank you for taking the time

[Rich_Winsor]

A heroic effort Michael and very informative,

however if you happen to check out the pics

of the actual structure posted in a different

thread it looks to me like getting a squashed

dome roof will be the least of the OP's worries.

The whole structure is composed of (for want

of a better description) free flowing forms that

are not necessarily composed of any regular

geometric shapes. As I said in the other thread

this is not the type of structure that Chief is

suited to modeling.

[Alaskan_Son]

34 minutes ago, Rich_Winsor said:

A heroic effort Michael and very informative,

however if you happen to check out the pics

of the actual structure posted in a different

thread it looks to me like getting a squashed

dome roof will be the least of the OP's worries.

The whole structure is composed of (for want

of a better description) free flowing forms that

are not necessarily composed of any regular

geometric shapes. As I said in the other thread

this is not the type of structure that Chief is

suited to modeling.

 

For this particular exercise I was only going off the example posted in THIS thread which does appear to be a simple oblate spheroid.  I do agree though...the one in the other thread is a different animal entirely.