Tensile Fabric Canopy

[John Ferris]

I know this is more of an ACAD question, but...How could I best model a tensile fabric canopy (like the ones in the attached photo) using ACA 2011. I usually use solids, but that doesn't seem applicable here. I'm sure translucent fabric material questions will follow...Thanks for the help - John

[Wayne Williamson]

If they are taught like those you could use 2 solids and use the intersection function for each canopy. This will work and give you the look that you want. Model the 1st solid in plan view of the canopy and extrude it to a depth greater than the structure. Model the second from the side view and again extrude it to be large than the final canopy. Overlap the two and do the intersection command. You should be left with just the areas where both solids were present & it should give you a good representation of what you are after.

[Kevin Lockwood]

Edgesurf. draw some arcs and mesh up a pretty good shape.

[Jan Verzelen]

"EDGESURF" would be my choice to model this as a mesh

[John Ferris]

Many thanks to all. I had an associate start on this and was guiding him towards nurbs. He ended up creating a "NURBSURFACE" object that I will hopefully be able to use on Monday when I get back into it. Anyone aware of any issues of nXt rendering nurbsurfaces? Thanks - John

[mike makki]

if you are going to use edgsurf....setvar in Autocad

type Surftab1....and enter value between 50 to 75

it should give you smooth curve

mike

[Marc Chaumier]

... And smooth calculation time ... ;)

[John Ferris]

As of now, I am drawing two 3dpolylines and lofting them together to create a nurbsurface that I can manipulate. We'll see how that goes when I get into some odd shaped canopies - again, thanks for the responses - John

[Jan Verzelen]

you can of course start with a simple planar surface, convert it to nurbs and add vertices as needed to manipulate the whole thing

[John Ferris]

Outcome...