Who is Stef Dalbosco? He's not only an enthusiastic gamer, both of the video and board variety. He's also the guy that created Curtain Wall for BricsCAD. Last week we learnt about BIMify. This week we sat together in the Bricsys booth and discussed the process for creating one of my favorite tools for BricsCAD BIM: Curtain Wall. The tool that automatically generates curtain walls from any surface!
What is Curtain Wall?
Curtain Wall (BIMCURTAINWALL) creates a curtain wall from any planar and curved surface. You can change the number of rows and columns, the depth of the frame and glass, and the junction type. First launch the command, then click the surface and voilà: a curtain wall. As soon as you discover it, you'll be trying to turn everything into a curtain wall.
From curved surface to curtain wall. Use BricsCAD's AI to automatically generate your designs.
There are currently two junction types: smooth and 'regular' connections. The smooth connections have clean junctions, whilst the regular connections have gaps at the junctions.
Left: regular junctions Right: smooth junctions
The windows themselves are fully editable solids and can be modified and adapted just like any other solid. This means you can generate windows from windows. Now things are getting a little inception...
Why did you create Curtain Wall for BricsCAD BIM?
At the beginning I tried to draw a curtain wall without the curtain wall tool and it was horrible.
What was the design process?
Quite incredibly he did the whole project on his own! He began by developing BIM Window Create (another cool BricsCAD BIM tool. It allows you to automatically generate windows from any 2D on polyline or grids).
Windows created from grids using BIMWINDOWCREATE
He then adapted it to fit 3D surfaces. The tool first divides the surface into a grid and then automatically generates windows. The greatest challenge was solving the problem of the connections. He explained that once the code is executed on a 3dimentional surface, the connections can do some surprising things. It took him a little fine-tuning to get the perfect balance.
Where is Curtain Wall going in the future?
He'll soon be adding a 3rd connection type: Axis Nodes. This will mean the connections themselves will be independent solids that will join the beams and windows.
He's also working on a new composition functionality for BricsCAD BIM that will come for the next major version. If it's as cool as Curtain Wall. I can't wait!
Want to try Curtain wall?
Easy to try, easy to buy, easy to own. That's BricsCAD® BIM. Try all of our products, for free for 30 days at www.bricsys.com. Freedom of choice, plus perpetual (permanent) product licenses that work with all languages, in all places. You'll love what we've built for you with the BricsCAD® product family.
