Grand Circular Staircase Design

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

In the last few weeks there have been posted questions related to circular staircases.  The Hybrid tools seem to handle this well.

 

I started looking at Grand Staircases to see how NURBS tools would fair in this field. 

 

 

 

[grant_PD]

Interested to see how you handled the interior scrollwork

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

15 minutes ago, grant_PD said:

Interested to see how you handled the interior scrollwork

And I would love to tell you....if I knew what "interior scrollwork" meant.😀

[rDesign]

9 minutes ago, VIRTUALENVIRONS said:

And I would love to tell you....if I knew what "interior scrollwork" meant.😀

I think they were referring to the guard infill which looks like wrought-iron scrollwork.

 

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

OK, got it.  Hard to explain that.  The linear parts I simply placed in, but  in the curves sections, the scroll work bends with the staircase.

The video below explains visually.

 

I used Duplicate Along Path to position a series of extruded scroll work into position.  They all needed some position tweaking to get them all in place.  Once in place I connected them with "Add Solids".  Then I ran a band in the same space as the scroll work.  The band is thinner so that when "intersect Solids" was applied, the scroll work bent with the band.....if that makes sense.

 

Note, I made this in a short day, so detail slips in some places.  I rendered the C4D the next day.

 

 

[grant_PD]

Got it.  So not a true bending of the "wrought iron" but close enough.  I would have seen if I could have broken down the stair into radii and deformed the shapes.  Or just done it in C4D.  Either way, staircases like these are lots of work and planning.  It looks nice.

 

 

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

There are/were other options.  It would have depended on what a client would have wanted.  As I indicated, built this in less than a full day, so this would be for visualization purposes.

When I was looking at examples online, C4D, Max, etc., there were some for sale, and pretty cheap.   But I did not find any made in CAD Systems.

 

If technicians were going to build this, more complex and much longer methodologies would be required.

[Joe-SA]

Curious, would a Surface Array of a symbol have actually 'bent' the scroll around the surfaces?  I don't have a need for this tool typically but it was my understanding that it does 'bend' symbols along a surface.  Can anyone confirm this?

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

15 hours ago, Joe-SA said:

would a Surface Array of a symbol have actually 'bent' the scroll around the surfaces

It does not appear to bend the Array object, but also I don't think it would work well on a strip like the stair case side. 

 

I have never had to use surface array, although it appears to have value, but there are never any threads on this topic.