Architecture Primitives

If you wander about the various departments at Autodesk, you run into several groups that deal with products for visualizing architecture, including the well-known product AutoCAD. This product is used by a vast number of engineers and architects to design the layouts for building physical structures.

Along with AutoCAD is VIZ, another very popular package that would be considered a close sibling to Max. AutoCAD VIZ is used to create visualizations of AutoCAD data and, like Max, deals with modeling, rendering, and shading 3D objects. In fact, many of the new features found in Max were originally developed for VIZ.

Using AEC Objects

Included in the features that have migrated over from VIZ are all the various architectural objects commonly found in buildings. These objects can all be found in the Create AEC Objects menu. The AEC Objects menu includes many different architecture primitives: Foliage, Railings, Walls, Doors, Stairs, and Windows.

Foliage

The Foliage category includes several different plants all listed in the Favorite Plants rollout, shown in Figure 6.28. The available plants include a Banyan tree, Generic Palm, Scotch Pine, Yucca, Blue Spruce, American Elm, Weeping Willow, Euphorbia, Society Garlic, Big Yucca, Japanese Flowering Cherry, and Generic Oak.

Figure 6.28: The Favorite Plants rollout shows thumbnails of the various plants.

At the bottom of the Favorite Plants rollout is a button called Plant Library that opens a dialog box where you can see the details of all the plants, including the total number of faces. The winner is the Banyan tree with 100,000 faces. Using the Parameters rollout, you can set the Height, Density, and Pruning values for each of these plants. Also, depending on the tree type, you can select to show the Leaves, Trunk, Fruit, Branches, Flowers, and Roots, and you can set the Level of Detail to Low, Medium, or High.

Railings

The Railings option lets you pick a path that the railing will follow. You can then select the number of Segments to use to create the railing. For the Top Rail, you can select to use No Railing or a Round or Square Profile and set its Depth, Width, and Height. You can also set parameters for the Lower Rails, Posts (which appear at either end), and Fencing (which are the vertical slats that support the railing).

The Lower Rails, Posts, and Fencing sections feature an icon that can be used to set the Spacing of these elements. The Spacing dialog box that opens looks like the same dialog box that is used for the Spacing Tool, where you can specify a Count, Spacing value, and Offsets.

Walls

Walls are simple, with parameters for Width and Height. You can also set the Justification to Left, Center, or Right. The nice part about creating wall objects is that you can connect several walls together just like the Line tool. For example, creating a single wall in the Top viewport extends a connected wall from the last point where you clicked that is connected to the previous wall. Right-click to exit wall creation mode. Figure 6.29 shows a room of walls created simply by clicking at the intersection points in the Top view.

Figure 6.29: Rooms of walls can be created simply by clicking where the corners are located.

Doors

The Doors category includes three types of doors: Pivot, Sliding, and BiFold. Each of these types has its own parameters that you can set, but for each of these door types, you can set its Height, Width, and Depth dimensions and the amount the door is Open.

Be aware when creating doors that Doors have two different Creation Methods-Width/Depth/Height and Width/Height/Depth. The first is the default, and it requires that the first click sets the Width, the second click sets the Depth, and the third click sets the Height. The Parameters rollout includes options to flip the direction in which the door opens. This is very handy if you position your door incorrectly.

Stairs

The Stairs category includes four types of stairs: LType, Spiral, Straight, and UType. For each type, you can select Open (single slats with no vertical backing behind the stairs), Closed (each stair includes a horizontal and vertical portion), or Box (the entire staircase is one solid object). For each type, you also can control the parameters for the Carriage (the center support that holds the stairs together), Stringers (the base boards that run along the sides of the stairs), and Railings.

The Rise section determines the overall height of the staircase. It can be set by an Overall height value, a Riser Height value (the height of each individual stair), or by a Riser Count (the total number of stairs). You also can specify the Thickness and Depth of the stairs.

Windows

The Windows category includes six types of windows: Awning, Casement, Fixed, Pivoted, Projected, and Sliding. As with doors, you can choose from two different Creation Methods. The default Creation Method creates windows with Width, then Depth, and then Height. Parameters include the Window and Frame dimensions, the Thickness of the Glazing, and Rails and Panels. You can also open all windows, except for the Fixed Window type.

Tutorial: Add stairs to a clock tower building

I'll leave the architectural design to the architects, but for this example, we create a simple staircase and add it to the front of a clock tower building.

To add stairs to a building, follow these steps.

1. Open the Clock tower building.max file from the Chap 06 directory on the DVD. This file includes a building with a clock tower extending from its center, but the main entrance is empty.

2. Select Create AEC Objects Straight Stair. Click and drag in the Top viewport from the upper corner where the stairs meet the entryway to the bottom of the stairs. Then drag downward to set the stairs' width and click at the opposite side of the entryway. Then drag downward again, and watch the Left viewport to set the stairs' height and click. Then right-click in the Top viewport to exit Stairs creation mode.

3. With the stairs selected, click the Select and Move (W) button in the main toolbar and drag the stairs in the Front viewport until they align with the front of one side of the entryway.

4. Open the Modify panel, and select the Box option in the Parameters rollout. Then adjust the Overall Rise value so it matches the entryway.

5. Select Tools Mirror, and select the Copy option with an Offset of around −140 about the X-Axis. Click OK.

Figure 6.30 shows the clock tower building with stairs.

Figure 6.30: The AEC Objects category makes adding structural objects like stairs easy.