BIM: special 'plastering/rendering/stucco' tool?
I am feeling the need for a special variant on existing tools, especially when modelling plaster or similar finishes.
The structure to be plastered may be complex, making internal and external angles, often non orthogonal, between its surface planes.
15mm thickness of plaster is easily applied by dmExtrude>Create>15, to each surface. These 15mm thick solids will overlap at internal angles, and leave open corners ar external angles.
See attached.
bimConnect is applied between the 2 sloping soffits descending to A - so far so good.
But elsewhere bimConnect is problematic, and the 15 thick solids' edges are shown pulled back from these connection lines, for clarity.
The connection lines AB, BG and BE cannot be formed without slicing solid F as shown.
Similarly at D.
At C many slices are needed - the large 15 thick solid can't even be formed by Selectionmodes>Boundary Detection because the intersection lines where the beam punches into the wall are not recognised as boundaries.
This comes down to Connect forming infinite connecting planes, so only able to trim a solid to external angles, like a pentagon for example. It cannot trim a solid to re-entrant or internal angles, as at B.
Another problem can happen e.g. at A, where it all may look fine but by moving solids aside you find there's a horrible mess of imperfect intersections. I expect there's a logical order that would get round this but it's into black magic and Workaround. Maybe not important with plastering, but could be critical when a shelled solid is needed.
I would like to se a tool that shells inward (or outward) all the chosen visible faces, automatically connecting edges properly, whether internal or external.
The structure to be plastered may be complex, making internal and external angles, often non orthogonal, between its surface planes.
15mm thickness of plaster is easily applied by dmExtrude>Create>15, to each surface. These 15mm thick solids will overlap at internal angles, and leave open corners ar external angles.
See attached.
bimConnect is applied between the 2 sloping soffits descending to A - so far so good.
But elsewhere bimConnect is problematic, and the 15 thick solids' edges are shown pulled back from these connection lines, for clarity.
The connection lines AB, BG and BE cannot be formed without slicing solid F as shown.
Similarly at D.
At C many slices are needed - the large 15 thick solid can't even be formed by Selectionmodes>Boundary Detection because the intersection lines where the beam punches into the wall are not recognised as boundaries.
This comes down to Connect forming infinite connecting planes, so only able to trim a solid to external angles, like a pentagon for example. It cannot trim a solid to re-entrant or internal angles, as at B.
Another problem can happen e.g. at A, where it all may look fine but by moving solids aside you find there's a horrible mess of imperfect intersections. I expect there's a logical order that would get round this but it's into black magic and Workaround. Maybe not important with plastering, but could be critical when a shelled solid is needed.
I would like to se a tool that shells inward (or outward) all the chosen visible faces, automatically connecting edges properly, whether internal or external.
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Comments
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The attachment0
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How about this approach:
1. Copy the solids you want to plaster.
2. 'Union' them into one solid.
3. Use the DmThicken command to add a plaster layer to selected surfaces.
4. Erase the solid from step #2.
5. Move the plaster shell to the correct position.0 -
Excellent, thanks.
Reading dmThicken Help, I thought there was a hope of having it work seamlessly on adjacent faces of different solids, but confirmed what you said - have to Union them first.
I guess this could be an automated routine - union selected, thicken, un-union - so maybe not so difficult to make a tool that does it in one easy step?
Such a tool could have a neat gizmo that would see coplanar surfaces of chosen studs/rafters as a continuous face to be Thickened (plasterboarded/sheetrock'd).0 -
The problem with creating a one-step routine is that you most likely do not want to thicken all surfaces. If you do then 'shelling' the temporary solid would be a faster option (you can use a negative value for the distance).0
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As I see it, you'd select the faces you're interested in, of various solids; the routine would union just those solids together; dmThicken already allows just selected surfaces to be thickened; un-union.
For future manipulation, it would be handy to have the option for all the thickenings created to be independent, nicely mitred together.
So maybe back to a Connect-based solution, but one that can cope with re-entrant/internal angles.0
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