The fantastic Pagoda

I watched an extremely interesting lecture on Autodesk University Online regarding the use of Revit in the film industry. One of the things shown in the lecture was a beautiful pagoda designed for the Fantastic 4 sequel.

Surprised by the incredible amount of detail I decided to try one myself. So – of to Google for research. 

The screenshots I took from the video were extremely low quality so I decided to become familiar with the construction techniques to help me extraploate the design from the screenshots. There is surprisingly little info on this but I  found a few interesting views of the roof construction of pagodas:

So to start of I built the main structure as a family.

and refine it a little...

The idea at this stage was to array this inside a new project and the model additional features as families before importing them. The problem with this is it left me with no reference when I created a new family.

I decided to build a wedge piece as a family as this would give me easier control and access to the inner workings of the model.

By arraying two structure pieces I now had a wedge that I could use as a reference to build the other pieces. Once a piece was build I saved the file, deleted everything except that peice and then saved it as a new family. This meant I ended up with all the pieces as seperate families that were at correct positions and heights that I could import into the main project.

getting interesting...

Added roofs

and doors 

 

and when you put them together you get...

This is a cutaway of the model after I arrayed the fasmily insode a new project.

And the final model:

There are still a few things I would like to change like the roofs. The first time round it gave me endless headaches so I was just too glad when it finally looked like something presentable. Now that I understand how to do it I will try again and this round put more time into refining it. So far I am happy with the results.

Deskpins - when you need to be on top!

I found another great little app. At first you can't really see why you might need it but once you used it you can't imagine life without it.

If you actually use all those processors in your PC every now and then for multitasking you might have run into the situation where you wish one window would stay on top of the others. Maybe doing research and you have to minimise and maximise between your browser and word processor... or maybe you would just like to watch that bootleg movie in the corner while crunching data in your spreadsheets.

Well - you need Deskpins  a free application for windows.

Once installed you can run it and it will sit in taskbar.

To pin a window you just click on the icon and on any open window and it will be pinned to be always on top.

So simple you would think Microsoft would build that function into their windows...

Gather your friends together (software)

If like me you make extensive use of IM (instant messaging) you will know that it can became quite a daunting  task to stay connected to everyone and keep track of all the apps running in your taskbar.  Well, we all have our preferences. I love Skype, some prefer Gmail, for some reason some use yahoo (like friends in Dubai where Skype is blocked) and then there are a) the fringe nerds who use apps like Miranda and b) the cultists that still use IRC messaging  (I’m one of them so I can sling the mud). 

After searching around for some way to consolidate this into one I found this wonderful app:

Pidgin  

With Pidgin you can connect to all of these accounts in one application – even twitter and facebook messaging – all in one convenient window. You can even have pidgin update your availability on all your accounts with one click.

As far as I know Pidgin does not yet fully support Skype (still my no 1 choice) but having two apps run in the taskbar instead of five is still a + in my book. 

Here is a list of networks supported by Pidgin:

• AIM
• Bonjour
• Gadu-Gadu
• Google Talk
• Groupwise
• ICQ
• IRC
• MSN
• MySpaceIM
• QQ
• SILC
• SIMPLE
• Sametime
• XMPP
• Yahoo!
• Zephyr

 and additional ones with plugins:

MXit
Xfire
Skype IM
Facebook IM
Microblog
msn-pecan
SIPE
Netsoul
Rediffbol
CyanChat
Twitter Protocol
WinMX Peer Network
NateOn
Tlen.pl
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