SAINTLY VIEWS

 

More progress on the Revit model of my local church. All Saints Basingstoke, a late example of Gothic Revival. Built to serve the southwards expansion of the town in the early twentieth century. There is a red-brick school close by for similar reasons.

Barely a century has passed but the society this church was born into is hard to imagine. First the decline of church going then the influx of other religions. I wish I could say this is all positive. I lived in a country of migrants (Dubai) and it was OK as long as you accepted that you were only a guest and that there were no safety nets and no tolerance for dissent.

This church was built when Britain was heading into the first world war. Still an empire, a cohesive society, not always fair, but what society is? I love the sense of history in living among these buildings, love the craft skills on display, the architectural flair. I just hope these churches will still be in use when my grandchildren are my age.

 

 

Turning my attention to the interior of my local church. It's actually quite interesting, both from a Revit family and an architectural design perspective. Two families developed so far.

A Wall hosted GM archway/recess. This cuts away the wall at the lower level to create freestanding columns on the diagonal. Also an arch with mouldings that disappear into the splayed sides of the column. I found that one quite tricky at first.

Above that, within the same family, a recess cut into the upper wall, with splays to match the column. Now I realise for the first time, the reason for the shape of the clerestory windows.

The second family is a wooden truss with vertical stone ribs acting as support brackets. Actually there is a little more to it than those two families, and more to come, but that's the main story.

 

 

Further work on my local church. Various adjustments including more windows. The families need to be customised to suit each case, but let's get something in there first. Added more gutters and horizontal sweeps.

After that I chose one of my perspective views and worked on the view settings. Lineweights including an "outline" setting. Line extensions and some view specific linework using invisible lines to clean up stubborn wall join conditions.

 

I'm quite happy with the progress here, so I decided to try the AI feature built into my Samsung phone. Quite a pleasant watercolour effect with no effort at all.

 

I thought it would be interesting to try combining the two images. I don't have Photoshop on my new laptop, so I decided to use Gimp. Struggled for a few minutes with the interface being messed up, but soon got back on track. Sadly the alignment of the two images is not good.

A special case of AI just making stuff up I think. Maybe if I knew what I was doing this could be sorted with a suitable prompt. But I don't think that's possible with the simple AI features built into Samsung gallery.

Worth a try.