I’m looking for some help with creating unrolled (flattened) elevations for curved walls. Since Rhino is the go-to tool for complex architectural geometry, dealing with curved surfaces is a daily task. However, I noticed that Rhino’s standard clipping planes and section tools only work on a single flat plane, which completely loses or distorts the curvature information.
I’m currently evaluating VisualARQ, and I was wondering: can it handle unrolled architectural elevations natively? Or is there any other elegant workaround?
The only workaround I can think of right now is a bit clumsy: I use the wall’s base curve to offset and create a torus-like solid, and then use that as a cage or surface base to morph everything inside the curved space into an equivalent straight box (basically like a destructive FlowAlongSrf workflow). After stretching it flat, I take the elevation.
The big issue is that this morphing process is completely destructive and a one-off thing—if the design changes, I have to redo everything from scratch.
Is there a better, non-destructive way to achieve this in Rhino or VisualARQ? I’d love to hear how you guys deal with this in your documentation workflow.
Hi @lishitong12 this feature is on our roadmap, but right now VisualARQ 3 doesn’t handle “unrolled” section views. I add your vote for this feature in our wish-list and let you know when it comes true.
Hi @lishitong12
currently I see now valid workaround on this matter. But anyway, if you start to “unroll” curved facades, you kinda loose all accuracy on the horisontal direction on the way. You cannot accurately describe curved structures with a flat elevation.
What I have done on these situations, is to use VisualARQ’s sections to get the elevations, and section it to polygonal outline. Finer the polygon, the more accurate the results. You can control the sections, in a way that the resulting elevations do not overlap.
To be honest, it’s a bit disappointing to hear that VisualARQ 3 still doesn’t support this natively, as unrolled elevations are pretty critical for documenting complex, organic architecture.
That being said, I really appreciate you adding my vote to the wish-list. I truly hope this feature gets bumped up on the roadmap soon, as it would be a massive game-changer for construction documentation.
Looking forward to seeing this implemented in a future update!
Thank you for your valuable insight and suggestion!
You are completely right about the accuracy trade-offs. However, in our actual workflow, having a continuous unrolled view is still very useful because it makes it much easier for our frontline workers to understand and guide the installation on site.
Because of this practical need, I will probably need to keep looking for a better or more automated way to handle these flattened elevations. I really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts!
Sure, here it is. This is the interior elevation of a circular corridor. The dimensions annotated on the floor plan are the arc lengths of the unrolled surface, and the horizontal scale of the elevation view is also based on this exact arc length.
Hi @lishitong12@fsalla
I made this quick attemp to somewhat automate the generation of curved sections.
I used curve segmentation to generate a buch of sections and then output the resulting section views in a row. Not a perfect solution, but gets you nearer.
Thank you so much for giving this a try and putting in the effort! This is definitely a huge step forward and makes things much easier, at least during the drafting phase. We can just do a bit of clean-up and minor redrawing for the final construction set. It seems like for a truly perfect solution, we’ll just have to wait for the official developers.
I am wondering why you are morphing “like a destructive FlowAlongSrf” and not actually using FlowAlongSrf. Like this unrolling of a circular inner wall, which seems to work OK:
This is because we often need to include section lines for concealed works (like the beam and slab structures) in our elevations. Therefore, we have to cut out a section of the space first, and then apply FlowAlongSrf to flatten it.
