Visualizing panel curvature

The Buildz blog has an excellent post on tools for checking the curvature of panels in a curved surface . However, I thought there might be an easier way. I found a method that uses Filters in Visibility graphics and shared reporting parameters. It is easy to understand and in some ways better. It does not require a special panel family for reporting the curvature. Instead, it works with any panel that has curvature.

A panel

To illustrate, start by creating a new curtain panel pattern based family. Use a Rectangular pattern. Pull the adaptive points out of the default plane. Draw reference lines for the diagonals. Place a point on each diagonal reference line. Move each point to the midpoint by setting its Normalized Curve Parameter to 0.5.

Draw a reference line between the two diagonal midpoints. This will be the measurement for how far out of a plane the panel is.

Set the Workplane to be this measuring line. Add a dimension between the two midpoints on this workplane.

Make the dimension into a parameter by using the Label tool. Make it an Instance parameter and a reporting parameter. Make it a shared parameter and call it outOfPlane.

Use Create Form to make a surface that connects all of the four adaptive points.

That’s the panel. Adding a measurement like this can be done to any panel. The color will be handled by Visibility Graphics of the view using Filters.

A curved surface

The next step is to make a curved surface. You can load one that you have already created or make a new one.

To make a new one, create a new Conceptual Mass. I made some reference planes to control the profiles of a curved surface. I drew four curves, one on each reference plane. Activate each reference plane to draw a reference line using Spline Through Points.

Use the Create Form tool to convert this into a surface.

Dividing the surface

Load the panel into the conceptual mass. Choose the conceptual mass object to select it.  Click Divide Surface to make a divided surface. Use the Type Selector to set your panel to be the type.

The conceptual model has all of the information about curvature of each panel. Once we have inserted it into a Project file, we can now use the Schedules and Visibility/Graphics with filters to inspect the curvature.

Create a new Project. Load the conceptual mass defining the surface into the new project.

To inspect the out of plane value for each panel, create a new schedule. (You may have to make sure that the shared parameter file is loaded.)

To obtain a color-coded visualization, select a view, such as the 3D view. Open the Visibility Graphics dialog, and choose the Filters tab. Create a New filter, and give it an appropriate name.

Check the Curtain Panel for the Categories. In the Filter Rules, pull down the Filter by: drop down menu and choose More parameters ….

Use the Add parameter button to reach the Parameter Properties dialog. Set the new parameter to be a shared parameter and choose your parameter for measuring flatness. Apply the parameter to Curtain Panels and close the dialog.

In the filter Rules section of the Filters dialog, select the outOfPlane parameter. Choose the criteria to be “is less that or equal to” and set the value to be 2”.

Copy this filter a couple of times and set additional filter rules criteria.

In the Visibility / Graphics dialog, add your new filters.

Change the Projection Surface Patterns for each filter to be a different color.

My surface is acceptable. I can change the filters to get a more detailed analysis of the surface. I can change the surface to increase the curvature or decrease the curvature.

A more dramatically curved surface shows some overly curved panels.

Summary

This method uses a reporting parameter of the panel to retrieve the amount that the panel is out of perfect flatness. This parameter is used by filters in Visibility/Graphics to colorize the surface. It can also be used to create a schedule of all of the panels.

In comparison to the method on the buildz blog, this method is very simple and straightforward, requiring no helper objects or duplicate panels. Also, this method can be applied to any panel being designed as a simple reporting parameter. The color coding is done in the project that uses the panel. For greater variation of the color coding, one need only add more filters. The filters only affect one view. Other views may still provide a realistic coloration of the surface. However, one can apply filters in other views by using a template.