How would you build that?

SketchUp Pro
, ,
1

Hello everyone,

How would you go about building that:

image
image2636×1613 288 KB

The subject are the fins. They have to all:
-be the same component.
-be perpendicular to the wall.
-Follow the curve of the roof
A coworker asked me for some advice to make that quickly, and my fix is not very elegant.
Here is what I did:
1-extract the flat curve of the walls, used pathcopy to set my fins all around
image
image1920×624 56.6 KB

2-extract the upper curve, made a surface out of it, using VertexTools
image
image2551×1187 230 KB

3-Move the fins over the building, drop them on the surface previously built with dropGC, and move them back in position
image
image1920×618 91.5 KB

4- And then, apply a section inside the fin group, to have nice flat bottom
image
image1920×547 102 KB

And voila, here is your quick final result with the fins ready to be toyed with.
But there is this secret and problematic section plan involved.
Among other things, it forces me to have a flat bottom. I can’t do that without breakings my components:
image
image3149×1327 153 KB

OR Zscaling them individually (which is precisely what I want to avoid)

I can somewhat see a way to do that using s4u’s to components, but it wouldn’t be very straightforward.

I would be curious to know how would you guys tackle that?

Bonus question:
If you can keep the spacing between the fins editable after they are all in place and properly dimentioned (within sketchup), I would worship you.

2

Build or model? It’s not a complicated shape and it has just quads, it’s perfect to be made with flowify in 5 mins.

3

Oh yeah, just model it. Thank you.
Can you preserve the components with Flowify? I believe it only bends raw geometry, and that would make live adjustments of the fins afterward impossible.

4

Easily with PB and su4u scale to surface. All elements will remain components.
Or PB and Booleans if you need exact cut

1 Like
5

Awsome! “Scale to surface” sounds exactly like what I was after. I’m going to check that right now.
How is profile builder better than PathCopy in this case?
Does it allow for pitch adjustment later for exemple?

6

Relatively the same in this case. Scaling is destructive anyway

1 Like
7

I’ve been looking around for a scale to surface extention with no luck.
Were you refering to the -extend Z axis- function of s4u-Transformer ?

image
image1807×1526 171 KB

I just ran into it, and it does just that.
Or is it yet something else?

8

One unique component

2 Likes
9

Thank you!
I like that one. Very swift work in just a few clicks!
For this specific usecase,I was kindof holding back from using s4u for converting faces to components, as the spacing between each fin is then defined by the size of the faces that initially compose the wall. Fixing the wall to get the spacing right was a bit tedious.
But I can see cases where this method is on the contrary much better than copying a component along a path! This is gold for positioning glass panels and window frames along a curvy curtain wall.

This step face selection is cool too.
I had to do that a few time and had no idea this tool existed!

Out of curiosity, what did you use to make this short video?
I’d love to do that, rather than making successive screenshots.

10

You’re welcome!

And you can control the size of the faces.

As for the clip, search Google for ‘screen capture’ and choose one of the many programs that exist, which seems best for you. Licecap is one of the simple ones.

1 Like
11

Quadface tools workflow! You’re speaking my language :slight_smile:
Indeed the face size can be modified, but as you show it is quite simple as long as you divide the faces. (or multiply them with subd I guess)
My concern would be to resize them for a specific spacing distance.
When I’ll be asked to try out the fin spacing at, say, 1800mm and then 1500mm (because that would make the frames cheaper for exemple), I’ll be in dire pain.
All I can think of right now, would be to extract the wall’s bottom curve, divide it in segments of the proper size with Fredospline. Extrude this curve upward, and then rebuild the roof curve on this new surface.
And finally run ToComponents again.

Or do you know a way to retopologyze a surface directly, with forcing the quads to a specific size?

12

Exactly where I ended up last time, :sweat_smile: unable to pick one after an hour.
Thanks for the advice, I’ll try licecap :+1:

13

Try s4u Divide

1 Like
14

This is great stuff!!!
S4U divide is really cool, but on top of that I had no idea -Line to component- in s4u’s To component was actually orienting the component relative to the face the line is on. And that, Sir, is definitely making my day, and my week!

15

What do you mean “does just that”? It’s all you need to accomplish

16

“Does just that” was in the sense of “does exactly that” but not in the sens of “does only that”. It wasn’t meant to be deprecating.

1 Like