Curtain Panels: Curved Shading Elements

A lot of what I have learned about Revit has come from trying to recreate existing buildings in a parametric environment.  This is the Singapore Performing Arts Centre which was designed in the late 1990’s and opened in 2002.

What interests me are the shading elements on the glass since This building was done long before we had Revit’s curtain panel elements! I know it’s hard to believe there was architecture before Revit, but somehow, someone managed to do this…and I’ll bet they had a headache when they were finished!

I wanted to investigate how the curtain panel by pattern tool could help me approximate these shading elements…it was surprisingly easy.  First make the panel,

Then apply it to the surface,

Links to these models are at the end of this post. This movie shows me creating the panel and applying it to the curvy surface:

By paramerizing the hieght and angle of the shade, i can then study how much light is allowed to pass through, and adjust the design to optimize shading based upon orientation.

Links to these models:

PATT_Rectangle Surface_Curved Shade.rfa

Panelized surfaces.rfa