Using definition within curtain panel family ? Perforated metal panel - placing model curves on panel

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Hi all

I am trying to help a colleague who is trying to represent a perforated panel with a grid of circles (purely model lines on a curtain wall panel)

Initially I had thought an adaptive component would be the way to go, however when dividing lines / surfaces the divisions don’t seem to match the shape very well in the way we’d intended.

I have made a dynamo script to get four adaptive reference points, line between, divide these curves, divide again and place circles (it felt a very cumbersome method - but its produced what we were looking for)

I have a basic question of how do i now translate this into something usable within revit. Namely to nest this into a curtain panel family? So it would produce an array of model lines which would match the outline of the panels?

It was suggested by a colleague could you filter all the panels in the project run the script to try to place circles, however I don’t want to go down this route as it seems the model lines would be simply placed there and if the panels / stair geometry changed, the pattern would not reflect this.

Any ideas anyone?

(also on an annoying side, i have come from a grasshopper background where items are virtual until they are baked. It seems once dynamo is closed the lines are effectively baked into the family, so if the parameters or overall geometry change, the original lines are still left - which also seem unselectable. We were trying to see if this theory was correct, in our various closes we’ve now got a huge mess of circles.)

This feels like a task which surely lots of people must have tried to tackle before

Thanks all

J-P and Gianluca

arrayed circles.rfa (344 KB)arrayed circles.dyn (36.6 KB)

1 Like
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Can you post a screenshot of the graph and the mess of lines?

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D’oh I posted this just before leaving thinking there may be an answer for the morning, so screenshot I can do tmrw

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My reason for checking now on my phone was to say. Is dynamo over complicating this and could a nested family within a panel work?

I’ve only done a few custom curtain panels and they’ve always been orthogonal.

Could a nested family / custom panel deal with a parallelogram and one step further a slanted to flat panel with 6 control points?

I imagine parrallelogram a reasonable hope… 6 sided not

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The mess of lines sounds like the Revit preview. Are they blue by any chance?

Did you consider using a hatch pattern (computationally light) instead of fussing with lines (computationally heavy)?

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Yeah they were blue as it happens… aha does that just need to be reset? Easy win

In terms of hatch patterns, I’ve not tried anything other than orthogonal ablnd I was told circles are out unless you approximate them with straight lines… which could be an option failing all else. How would offsets work though ?

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Yeah the blue lines are the “non-baked” preview. you can shut this off in the settings if you find it annoying.

Creating an array and generating formulas to control it is something I haven’t used dynamo for, but there are several good tutorials on how already on the web. Just be ready for your model performance to tank when you do this - it can be VERY taxing on your system. Hatches are likely best as a result. Render them with materials, illustrate them as octogons or similar with the hatches.