mouldings

[dxyner]

Can anyone suggest a quick and efficient way to do architectural mouldings? I end up having to clean up a lot of geometry when I try to rail extrude a profile. Can anyone tell me a simpler way to get clean mouldings please?

Thanks in advance

Dxyner

[Ron Schatz]

Rail exturde does not work well for architecture jobs most times, I have tried but I only use it for lose hand railing on custom stairs

Moldings, crowns, belt bands, and such, I have done the same for years from lw3.1 to 8.2, I'm also sure their are plugins for building them but by the time you find them, you should hitting F10 and sitting back, and thinking of next job.

step 1- Make or select points for the perimeter (planview) of the exterior or interior space you want build your molding, select in order then make poly (p key)

step 2- Extrude ploy to make a solid, name polys lower stone or wainscoat ( note bottom ploy should be at 0 y feet and the top poly at, say 34" or the bottom of molding board is going to start at)

step 3- Your going to be drawing the wall section one segment at a time using the just the bevel tool, with alittle practice this takes 3-5 mins to block in detailed walls. You just need to know what the building is doing so that you can plan your moves.

OK, Select just the top polygon ( if you have other masses with the same molding but in different heights and rooms, make the polygons for all these spaces first so that you can build them at the same time, flip polys as needed to do this)
now bevel ( b key) hold click left mb and drag sideways ( watch the numeric window for size, Inset is side movement and Shift is up and down movement) and release, check box to change surface name and type in molding then hold click RIGHT mb and drag up or Dn ( depends on the working polygon your using, it sometmes feels backwards) watch numeric shift for size.

3A-Right click again to make new polys and remember to rename surfaces as you go building your walls, bands, caps, moldings, crowns, gutters, copping, hip roofs...

Practice free hand beveling with single polys, it is amazing just how fast you can build lamps, windows, walls details ... the list goes on

Smooth angle on surfaces will need to reduced from the default 89.53 degs to maybe 50-40 degs

This sample was made in 2 mins, this technic works great to ballpark hip roofs.
just know the what the wall section looks like.

In point mode select the molding pts to move up and down or stretch just height

Good luck

[Ron Schatz]

Other modeling samples of a stage 1 model using this technic.