How best to model a brickwork corbel?

[Christiaan]

What's the best way to model a brickwork corbel to a gable end parapet? Files attached.

 

My first thought was to model the whole gable end, including the corbel, as an Extrude + Auto Hybrid. But this creates an annoying line in Hidden Line render between my Walls and the Auto Hybrid.

 

 

So I tried modelling the corbel with bits of Wall instead, but then I can this Surface Hatch mess:

 

example_v2017.vwx.zip

example_v2018.vwx.zip

[digitalcarbon]

Ugh.  If you want to show quality detail then you will need to direct model it...what i would do is make symbols of the roof corners etc then mirror.

 

all brick on a separate layer then section cut that to get a plan then overlay that over your standard floor plan vp

 

Ugh. 

[digitalcarbon]

now you introduce a LOD with brick coursing that may be correct and true but still does not line up with your windows because the VW windows are mostly generic.... so now you will need to direct model the windows...ugh.  its a slippery slope.  a few years back i use to show the interior and exterior trim on a house, parametric window with direct modeled complex trim...it never worked well because the window tool was too generic and if i set the window to the interior dims then the exterior dims would be wrong...

[Christiaan]

18 minutes ago, digitalcarbon said:

Ugh.  If you want to show quality detail then you will need to direct model it...what i would do is make symbols of the roof corners etc then mirror.

 

all brick on a separate layer ...

 

But that wouldn't avoid the line created between Walls and direct modelled objects in Hidden Line view would it?

Edited October 10, 2017 by Christiaan

[digitalcarbon]

dont know...its one of those things where you are trying to mesh non-friendly ways of working.  what happens is, IF you start to introduce direct modeling into a parametric system then you need to think of how far the direct modeling needs to be taken so that it ends on a seam of some parametric object...so it does not show a line in elevation.  

[Christiaan]

We need a "Merge with Surface Hatches/Textures in Elevations" feature like we now have "Merge with Structural Objects in Sections"

[Gadzooks]

On 10/10/2017 at 11:22 AM, Christiaan said:

But that wouldn't avoid the line created between Walls and direct modelled objects in Hidden Line view would it?

 

Hi Christiaan - Looks simple? It isn't. - This problem has more layers than a black forest gateaux. (must be time for tea).

 

This is worth cracking, as this type of detail is often used. So I'm still having a play with your files to see if there's a more satisfactory way of forming your corbels, but for the moment I think your 'line' on the first screenshot is merely a mis-alignment of the hidden line texture. If you pan in close (no - closer than that!) you can see a few mm out.

 

 

If you re-register (zero'ed to the base of the extrude/auto hybrid) the texture refreshes correctly as you would want. 

 

 

 

On 10/10/2017 at 0:08 PM, Christiaan said:

We need a "Merge with Surface Hatches/Textures in Elevations"

 

Yes - definitely would help this situation, but nevertheless, having arrived by the 'long-hand' method available this also somewhat corrects the brick bond (left to right) - but I've noticed your corbel construction starts with three courses of brickwork which should be 225 high in round terms whereas you have 218.63mm (on your uploaded file). I know this is picky, but the texture starts to drift.

 

 

Hope this might help for the moment.

[Benson Shaw]

Isn’t this also a problem of the simplified, schematic nature of the brick hatch?  The lines in the hatch represent the middle of the grout. The corbel bricks have no grout on their exposed bottom and outfacing surfaces. A hatch (center of grout) properly aligned for other areas of the wall will never line up correctly with the exposed faces of the cantilevered brick courses.

 

-B

[Gadzooks]

3 hours ago, Benson Shaw said:

Isn’t this also a problem of the simplified, schematic nature of the brick hatch

 

Yes, agree Benson.

 

In some ways the hatch is well meaning but too detailed. I believe what's sufficient in hidden-line is an indication of the surface material. Personally, I often choose to show just the horizontals (and verticals for soldier courses etc.) The elevations don't then get tied up with the bricks needing to be shown to be 'bonded' correctly. (Which I think the above exercise has proved to be quite difficult at times). More like the hand drawn detail we would provide years ago. (Yes, I remember!).

 

The elevations can be 'knocked back' by using a grey rather than black pen for the hatch and even to use a degree of sketch to move towards a hand finished look.

 

 

Edited October 11, 2017 by Gadzooks

[Diego - Resuelvector]

One workaround for this problem is to use a 2d polygon with a hatch masking the wall in the viewport, that way you can control better the brick hatch

[Christiaan]

On 11/10/2017 at 3:27 PM, Gadzooks said:

for the moment I think your 'line' on the first screenshot is merely a mis-alignment of the hidden line texture. If you pan in close (no - closer than that!) you can see a few mm out.

 

You're right, this is contributing to the effect of the horizontal line when zoomed out, but if you zoom right in and turn on Zoom Line Thickness you'll see that the main problem is a thick line around the perimeter of the auto-hybrid.

 

On 11/10/2017 at 3:27 PM, Gadzooks said:

I've noticed your corbel construction starts with three courses of brickwork which should be 225 high in round terms whereas you have 218.63mm (on your uploaded file). I know this is picky, but the texture starts to drift.

 

Ah yes, good spotting, this certainly wasn't helping things with regard to the corbel  

 

On 11/10/2017 at 6:12 PM, Benson Shaw said:

Isn’t this also a problem of the simplified, schematic nature of the brick hatch?  The lines in the hatch represent the middle of the grout. The corbel bricks have no grout on their exposed bottom and outfacing surfaces.

 

Any inaccuracy caused but this I'm not too worried about. In terms of the miss-alignment at the corbel I think it was more to do with the 218.63 figure Gadzooks spotted. The main problem I'm trying to solve here is horizontal line across the elevation in my first screenshot. The second screenshot is simply a go at trying to get rid of that line.

 

On 11/10/2017 at 9:57 PM, Gadzooks said:

I often choose to show just the horizontals (and verticals for soldier courses etc.) The elevations don't then get tied up with the bricks needing to be shown to be 'bonded' correctly. (Which I think the above exercise has proved to be quite difficult at times). More like the hand drawn detail we would provide years ago. (Yes, I remember!).

 

Yes, agreed, and we're doing it like this on all our other projects. I wanted to give it a go on this project and see where I could take it. But either way this wouldn't actually solve the problem of the horizontal line generated by the auto-hybrid.

 

(another problem in the mix of all of this is that there is some bug that is causing a situation whereby the Surface Hatch doesn't always align with the Texture in a Section Viewport (but does in a normal Viewport))

[Gadzooks]

22 hours ago, Christiaan said:

You're right, this is contributing to the effect of the horizontal line when zoomed out, but if you zoom right in and turn on Zoom Line Thickness you'll see that the main problem is a thick line around the perimeter of the auto-hybrid.

 

 

Christiaan - I've looked at this with 'zoom' (I don't usually set that myself - but fair do's, it highlights the problem)

 

If you move the wall away from the auto-hybrid, you will see both objects are given a thicker line perimeter by VW in the hidden line option you've chosen. So thats established its not just the auto-hybrid gable you've drawn.

 

So - start by editing the wall style.

 

In edit you will see the components (and the wall itself) can have pen sizes allocated to it. At the moment they are set to class style. This class size is 0.13 (you can see if you turn the class selection off). As a test, choosing 0.05 will provide a size the same as the brick pattern (To check, if you edit the brick pattern you can see its set to 'draw' in 0.05). If you edit the outer components (these are what VW uses to 'frame' walls in hidden line) to each be drawn in 0.03 it fixes your perimeter problem.

 

I've looked at your auto-hybrid and that also is drawn in the thicker 0.13 pen. Making the same change fixes that (both parts will need changing - the gable and the coping) although the coping looks better untouched in my opinion.

 

A better way must be to change the class style setting itself. But I thought this would provide a better explanation of the reason you have that 'look' and a way to quickly test the modification works.

 

And - making changes like can have unwanted consequences elsewhere.

 

I hope that proves useful - By the sounds of it you may be moving away from this presentation type so the line issue may not be quite so important to fix.

 

(I'm still looking at the corbels construction when I get a moment - this is the face atm  - I'm hoping to change that!)

 

 

 

[Christiaan]

3 hours ago, Gadzooks said:

In edit you will see the components (and the wall itself) can have pen sizes allocated to it. At the moment they are set to class style. This class size is 0.13 (you can see if you turn the class selection off). As a test, choosing 0.05 will provide a size the same as the brick pattern (To check, if you edit the brick pattern you can see its set to 'draw' in 0.05). If you edit the outer components (these are what VW uses to 'frame' walls in hidden line) to each be drawn in 0.03 it fixes your perimeter problem.

 

I've looked at your auto-hybrid and that also is drawn in the thicker 0.13 pen. Making the same change fixes that (both parts will need changing - the gable and the coping) although the coping looks better untouched in my opinion.

 

Indeed, but while this appears to fix the immediate problem there are two issues with it:

1. These pen sizes are our office standard for presentation of walls in plan, section and (hidden line) elevations. Reduce these thicknesses down to match the thickness of the hatch and it makes our elevations (and plans + sections) more difficult to read, because the outer part of the wall is no longer emphasised with a thicker line. At the very least this would then require manually drawing outlines in the Annotations layer of our elevation viewports; something I've been deliberately trying to avoid.
2. It doesn't actually get rid of the line, it only hides it amongst the hatch I happen to be using. If I were using a different hatch, say a simple crotch hatch, the line would be visible again.

Edited October 20, 2017 by Christiaan