Chief challenge (what else do you have to do today?)

[Lighthouse]

For years I've been obsessed with trying to model a parabolic roof.  I once got it to sort of work by using the terrain and changing the material, but it wasn't exact. Now that we are up to x12 (or 13?) I wonder if there is some new function that would make this possible, if someone is clever enough, which I am not.  I have built the frame and rafters in the attached model (a tedious task in itself), I just want to skin it with the roof surface (and ideally a ceiling below that follows the parabolic shape).  I know I could make a hole bunch of PS and arrange them, but I'm looking for a more elegant solution.  I'm offering a $50 donation to your favorite charity to the winner.  Anyone interested?  btw, it doesn't have to actually function like a roof in terms of cutting off the walls, I could do that manually.

parabola roof.plan

[robdyck]

This isn't perfect, but it's as close as I can come with limited time.

 

 

[Lighthouse]

No way!  you win the prize!  But you have to post the plan.  What's the secret?  Where should I send the donation?

[robdyck]

16 hours ago, Lighthouse said:

No way!  you win the prize!  But you have to post the plan.  What's the secret?  Where should I send the donation?

Hey David, the plan is posted. I used terrain tools. I modeled a terrain perimeter for the roof. Terrain features for everything else roof related. I also converted those objects into a symbol and placed it on a separate layer.

The real limitation heres is that Chief doesn't provide us with a terrain elevation line tool that does interpolation based on different elevation data at the start and end of the elevation line. So instead I used elevation points...and its actually pretty quick.

 

If you do indeed plan on continuing with a donation, then my choice would be Samaritans Purse. Very generous of you! Enjoy your thanksgiving holiday!

https://www.samaritanspurse.org/

 

333216373_parabolaroof.plan 

[Lighthouse]

 

Thanks for posting the plan.  Would you mind reposting where the roof is not a symbol (just the actual terrain model)?  I'm trying to study the exact elevation points that you created, but that info seems to be embedded in the symbol and not available.  Thanks.   Looks like a good charity!

[robdyck]

1 hour ago, Lighthouse said:

 

Thanks for posting the plan.  Would you mind reposting where the roof is not a symbol (just the actual terrain model)?  I'm trying to study the exact elevation points that you created, but that info seems to be embedded in the symbol and not available.  Thanks.   Looks like a good charity!

Really awesome of you! The roof symbol is on its own layer (Roof 2) and the elevation points are on their default layer and can be turned back on...I just turned it off once I was done with them.

 

[Lighthouse]

Now I see the points (lots of them!).  Did you use some fancy math to calculate them?  I assume you didn't measure each one.  Wait, I didn't see the new video, let me study that to see if it answers my question

 

[robdyck]

2 hours ago, Lighthouse said:

I assume you didn't measure each one.

You are correct. Slope percentage calculations, place an elevation point, transform/replicate at the appropriate coordinate offsets, then copy and reflect about the center line.

[Alaskan_Son]

There are several ways of accomplishing your end goal.  I would personally put Terrains a little further down my list of preferred methods though.  You could pretty easily use Faces extruded into Solids or you could even use actual Roof Planes.  Both of my preferred methods would essentially be done using your rafters as a wire frame.  Faces would result in a smoother but less dynamic end product.  Roof planes would require a little extra work but also carry a bunch of other benefits.  Anyway, here's a quick example of how roof planes could be used.  Your rafters were imperfectly modeled, so the resulting roof planes aren't quite perfect, and I didn't take any time to deal with the material definitions which may be necessary depending on the roofing material, but hopefully this should give you the basic idea.  At the end of the day, I don't recall having yet found a roof that couldn't be accomplished using multiple planes though...

 

Parabaloid modified.plan

[Alaskan_Son]

11 minutes ago, Lighthouse said:

Hi Michael,

This got by me, just studying it.  Really impressive solution.  I'm curious about the roof planes- it seems to me the only way to get the ridgeline to go up at an angle is to create a roof plane, then rotate it in plan.  but in that case the shingles follow the rotation.  It doesn't appear that is what you did, since your shingles are parallel to the ridge and eave.  Is there a simple way to describe how you angled the ridge upwards on each individual roof section?  I see that they are triangular slices, to so I'm referring to those slices that have their wide section at the ridge

 

I did those by adjusting the Baseline Angle for each roof plane one at a time....

[buzzsaw204]

On 11/27/2020 at 4:13 PM, Alaskan_Son said:

There are several ways of accomplishing your end goal.  I would personally put Terrains a little further down my list of preferred methods though.  You could pretty easily use Faces extruded into Solids or you could even use actual Roof Planes.  Both of my preferred methods would essentially be done using your rafters as a wire frame.  Faces would result in a smoother but less dynamic end product.  Roof planes would require a little extra work but also carry a bunch of other benefits.  Anyway, here's a quick example of how roof planes could be used.  Your rafters were imperfectly modeled, so the resulting roof planes aren't quite perfect, and I didn't take any time to deal with the material definitions which may be necessary depending on the roofing material, but hopefully this should give you the basic idea.  At the end of the day, I don't recall having yet found a roof that couldn't be accomplished using multiple planes though...

 

Parabaloid modified.plan 3.43 MB · 155 downloads

 

any possible method to accomplish this with just one  Roof plane...now that we have X15,  could we generate roof trusses for it?

[Alaskan_Son]

20 minutes ago, buzzsaw204 said:

 

any possible method to accomplish this with just one  Roof plane...now that we have X15,  could we generate roof trusses for it?

 

Definitely not possible with a single roof plane.  The answer to your question is actually right there in the name.  Its a roof plane (a flat surface on which a straight line joining any two points on it would wholly lie) and the roof being described above is anything but.  It can only be modeled with multiple planes/faces. 

 

The trusses on the other hand are completely possible.  That's one of the main benefits of using roof planes instead of Faces or the Terrain tools:

 

That being said, you could also optionally change the roof pitch several time (once for each and every truss), generating new trusses after each pitch change in order to get your trusses.  Once you had the trusses generated you could then use whatever method you wanted to model the rest.