Drawing a Dome Shade Sail Structure

[RobWhite]

Any ideas, if its possible, of the best way to drawings a dome shade sail frame and sail.

 

I prefer to try and do this in chief. I have tended to and prefer to use chief for creating symbols than Sketchup, but the dome shape in 3D seems limited in Chief. 

 

When I create a arch in plan view I only get an option to convert to Mold Polyline or 3D Molding Polyline, but once I have done this I need to be able to rotate in elevation to get the required 3D effect. 

If created in 3D solid I think I could rotate in elevation view, a single line conversion does not provide that option.

 

Any hints in Chief or do I need to do this in Sketchup. 

 

I have loved recent upgrade of Chief that have made sketch up less necessary.

 

See the photo of what I am trying to document. (pretty sophisticated, but unfortunately becoming more common &Y necessary: Not to mention making drawing a little more fun!) 

 

[Chopsaw]

Rob,  I was going to give you a flat out No.  However if you could work out all the cable geometry with moldings then the sections of material between the cables is essentially almost flat.  You could then fill in each section with a face snapping to the intersection points of the moldings.

 

If there is any doubt there is a guy about half way between here and there that I am sure would help out if it is possible.   @yusuf-333

 

On the other hand a small residential type of shade sale that is not flat and only suspended by it's perimeter would be much more difficult.

[rgardner]

1 hour ago, RobWhite said:

When I create a arch in plan view I only get an option to convert to Mold Polyline or 3D Molding Polyline,

Convert it to a faceted and closed poly line before converting to a solid.

 

Another tip would be to use solid subtractions with cones.

[glennw]

You could try using a terrain and then converting to a symbol.

I think the sail will be fairly easy, but the frame is the difficult bit.

[RobWhite]

Thanks very helpful. Some new info for me to work

[Alaskan_Son]

All completely doable using a number of methods and tools.  For the sail itself though, I would recommend either roof planes or 3D faces.  Either way, you're likely going to need to do so using a sort of manual wireframe modeling approach.  The main things that you need to do though:

1. Make sure you head wrapped around the geometry of what you're about to model.  This will make planning out your approach much easier.
2. Decide the basic pieces of information necessary to carry out your plan
3. Model the skeleton shape one way or another
4. Fill in with roof planes or faces.

 

Let's walk though a pretty basic example using 3D molding polylines and 3D faces (and please note that there are other completely different but still logical approaches to modeling the skeleton shape aside from the method I'm showing):

 

Let's assume that the perimeter frame is nothing more than a perfect ring that has been cut in half and one half tilted up.  That means modeling the exterior perimeter should be pretty easy.  Model it flat and then copy, reflect, and tilt the opposite side up...

 

...the frame part is done

NOTE:  I left the 2 sections of the ring as 3D molding polylines so that snapping was easy and so that I could add any desired perimeter framework details later

 

Next, maybe you connect with 3D molding polylines...

 

And then fill in with faces...

 

Expand upon the system and dress it all up to your hearts content...

[robdyck]

The pringle, I mean shade itself is very simple to create using terrain tools. This took a bit longer to think about than it did to actually model. 15 elevation points was enough. Now I need a snack!

[Alaskan_Son]

On 8/10/2022 at 5:09 PM, robdyck said:

The pringle, I mean shade itself is very simple to create using terrain tools. This took a bit longer to think about than it did to actually model. 15 elevation points was enough. Now I need a snack!

 

Hahahaha!  I thought the EXACT same thing regarding the Pringle shape.  At first, I actually fooled around with modeling it completely different by simply bending a flat circle twice (once along one axis and then again in the opposite direction along the perpendicular axis)...

...but it occurred to me that not only was this likely inaccurate, it would be ridiculously more complicated to model the frame.

 

Using your terrain approach though, a person could pretty easily just use some symbols or even a railing wall set to follow the terrain in order to create the frame.  Many ways to skin that cat for sure. 

[robdyck]

12 minutes ago, Alaskan_Son said:

a person could pretty easily just use some symbols or even a railing wall set to follow the terrain in order to create the frame.

Well, some person. That may be a bit tough for me! However, making grommets and cable connectors gets a bit easier when you can clamp them to the terrain.

[robdyck]

Ok. No more! I quit!

[yusuf-333]

On 8/10/2022 at 7:11 AM, Chopsaw said:

Rob,  I was going to give you a flat out No.  However if you could work out all the cable geometry with moldings then the sections of material between the cables is essentially almost flat.  You could then fill in each section with a face snapping to the intersection points of the moldings.

 

If there is any doubt there is a guy about half way between here and there that I am sure would help out if it is possible.   @yusuf-333

 

On the other hand a small residential type of shade sale that is not flat and only suspended by it's perimeter would be much more difficult.

Hey chop thanks, but this one is too tough to go with chief. Any ways here is my take on it. I modelled it as a plane structure as you can see in the picture. Then converted it to window and applied it on curved wall to bend the whole structure.

Thank you.

[ShaneK]

Yusuf33 shows us how it is done!!! You are one of the best in this group and always has been