SPARE RIBS FOR QUASIMODO

The triforium galleries on the chancel side (east of the crossing)  Circular windows above ogival recesses on the outside.  These were already in place along the sides (N&S) but not where the galleries turn the corner up against the transepts.  This reveals the need to omit the lower arches on the last flying buttresses, which lie in the plane of the outer wall.  Maybe a visibility switch would do the trick.

So while I’m here, might as well add the door that leads to a spiral stair (presumably)  And while I’m at it there are a couple of doors on the outside that connect via short balustraded galleries to the “bridge” that crosses the Rose Window.  This arrangement seems to be specific to the North transept.  The connections on the South side surely exist, but are not expressed on the outside of the building.  Why the difference?  Good question.

That spiral stair also connects to the roof over the Triforium Galleries.  Not stair object at present, just an open shaft.  The bridge across the rose has two levels, both accessed via short external balconies.  Piecing the story together bit by bit.  

Switching to the outside.  A while back I replaced the extrusion representing the Sacristy in the site context file and modelled a simplified version with actual walls and roofs in the main file, adjusting the windows etc where it connects to the cathedral.  I decided to do a similar job on the other building along the south side.  Was this a Bishop’s House?  I thought I read that somewhere.  The only reference I can see on the plans we have calls it a “Batiment du Personnel”  Also did a few small improvements to the Site Context file while I was at it. 

Then we got into a discussion on Slack about the trees (planting families)  I have been using a customized version of the standard RPC objects.  They render up nicely in Enscape, but if you want to do a shaded view from high level looking down on the building they look a bit naff.  

Realistic looks even worse from high up because they are just jpegs pasted on a vertical plane.  One answer is to use Enscape Assets.  These are Revit families and render nicely in Enscape.  In shaded views they have a low poly mesh.  Kind of a shapeless blob.  

A third option is to use a cad mesh tree with a finer level of detail, embedded in a Revit family in place of the Enscape geometry.  Two custom parameters refer Enscape to the appropriate Asset definition.  I have developed a system for embedding plan symbols that you can swap out and also scale relative to the height of the geometry so that it is roughly the same size in plan as the tree geometry itself.  So that’s what we are using at the moment.

Back to the triforium gallery, and looking at the curved portion around the apse, or ambulatory.  I’m not going to tackle the vaults.  (Alfredo territory) but I am going to have a look at the ribs that support the vaults and the way they site on clusters of columnettes that sit against the walls.  

If I can establish this relationship, at least in principle, it may help Alfredo when he gets a chance to take the “zig-zag” vaults to the next level of development.  The vaults he developed for the ground floor ambulatory are might impressive, but the way they connect to the arches and columns that support them is not yet fully resolved.  

Slack is an integral part of our workflow: constant chatter across the continents.  At first there were a couple of grumbles from those more familiar with WhatsApp.  I use WhatsApp all the time for friends and family, but for work groups collaborating on projects, Slack is a better tool.  Anyway, there was a call to change the Icon from the default “PN”  


I wanted to use Quasimodo, but Icons need to be bold and simple, so in the end I chose the West Rose.