PARTY TIME

 

Preston Candover. Village along the road in the valley bottom, Church to the right at the junction. Today I added trees to this view, not as many as there are in reality, just as many as I felt I needed to convey the message.

I'm not happy with the grey blocks that are pretending to be houses. Just put that on the list along with people and a couple of gravestones. But next up is probably another camera angle, something a bit closer.

 

GAJ Xmas party last night. Had a great time. Not sure if I will be able to attend any more of these. It seems I now have five thumbs on each hand. Turns out that practising every day for a week is not enough to get your skills back 😂

Nobody warned me about the lifetime achievement award. What a wonderful surprise. Can't believe how quickly the time has gone. I won't be leaving Dubai until April and I do intend to come back on visits. So many good friends. Special thanks to Brian, and Pratheep for taking care of me.

What a wonderful firm.

 

 

Dubai Metro is coming to International City. It will be too late for me, but it's good to see it happening at last. Such a dense concentration of lower-middle income residents out here, about half an hour drive from the city centre.

I'm assuming it will be a raised track but no sign of them working on the supporting pillars yet. Several cranes, probably the station locations. I've watched so many major projects being built from the ground up in the time I've been here.

Easy to point the finger but there is a dynamism in this place based on welcoming workers in from all around the world in a very controlled way. Opportunities for all, from top executives to deliveroo drivers. Far from perfect but a fascinating place that holds its head high.

 

 

So far I've been adding pitched-roof "houses" to the context models using "model in place" Time to switch it up and create a parametric family. The chimney has a visibility parameter. Turn it off for short returns etc.

The intention is to represent villages as they were in 1900, when churches were still the centre of life. Choice of materials for both walls and roof. Independently variable in all 3 dimensions plus roof pitch. No windows or doors for the moment.

 

PRETTY PORTSMOUTH PIX

 

Some days are just better than others. Or maybe it’s just different. Maybe you need the hard slog day to wake up next morning and break through the barrier, play some guitar in the middle and close out with a couple of sexy images.

I discovered that the top layer of transparent toposolid subdivisions were the source of all my problems. Deleting these gave me a file size 300x smaller! Goodbye pain. All the boundaries still exist as red lines floating in a flat plane, so not very hard to trace out a road network as a white floor slab.

 

 

Next came families to represent the housing terraces. Then a break to rest up and practice some songs for GAJ Xmas party. Finishing up with a couple of camera views lightly processed in PIXLR. Been a while since I did that.

 

 

So I’m happy with the context views (St Mary’s Fratton) for now at least. Time to go inside and do something similar to the West Woodhay church. That kept me busy for a couple of days and of course I discovered new things along the way. There are quite a few questions I can’t resolve with my current information. Probably needs a site visit and a whole bunch of interior photographs.

 

 

All the same it’s looking pretty good with the hammer-beam roof and the wrought iron chancel screen. Another day or so, back and forth between the model and the sheet. This is my goal for each of the churches I’ve been working on. Condense the design and its context down to a single sheet so that it becomes easier to compare and contrast. Think Bannister Fletcher for the digital age. 

 

 

 

CANDOVER MENTALITY

Just in case it's too obscure, the title is a play on "can do" a typically American mindset. Used to be British in Blomfield's day but we seem to have lost it during my lifetime, or maybe it started in the aftermath of the Great War (1914-18)  For me it represents an attitude towards Revit and BIM generally. During my 22 years with GAJ in Dubai I have insisted on using these tools and processes for my own purposes, exemplified by the slogans "BIM pencil" and "the Way We Build"

Preston Candover is a small village a little to the south of Basingstoke, on the west side. Don't seem to be any buses going that way so I'll have to look for another way of getting there.

There is a small redundant church at the south end of the village, replaced by Blomfield's design close to a three-way junction. I already did a basic massing model so it's time for some upgrades. First I added tracery to a couple of windows. Then I went inside.

 

The nave trusses have an unusual design. The chancel ceiling is different. Pews and an altar plus aisle arches gave me enough for a compelling image. Good enough for now anyway. Note the face-brick interior, in contrast to the flint of the exterior. (with brick dressings)

Next came the assembly views which will feature on the sheet.

 

Time to capture site context data using Forma. I did a bit better with my process this time, but still forgot to do my initial Revit save outside Onedrive. Once again, I deleted the subdivisions to reduce the processor load, but I restored the roads as a separate subdivision, not in overlapping lengths as they come out from Forma, but as one continuous boundary.  Also adjusted the material shading colour. Didn’t affect the realistic view thankfully.  I always used to be jealous of Sketchup’s texture mapping although it doesn’t fit well with the BIM paradigm. Just a paint on effect rather than a rigorous “database” of materials with other properties.  This changed with the arrival of the realistic view and now I enjoy the simplicity with which Revit can keep the shaded, realistic and hidden line modes available in parallel. Two clicks to choose which you prefer for any given view.

 

So I linked yet another Revit file into my main map, put it on a unique workset for memory management, and created a camera view looking down the slope, across the valley to the churchyard starting to rise up the opposite side. Trees to follow.

All these views are being added to a sheet for the church as I did before for West Woodhay, and Fratton. The interior view on the sheet is different from the earlier one of course, which was captured from Family Editor while I worked on the modelling of the church itself. To place a view on a sheet, I have to have a camera placed directly in the project environment. Probably I should also have a view looking towards the church from the street. Maybe on the next pass. I’m inclined to move on to one more of Blomfield’s churches now add the site context and place views on a sheet.