Technique for tiling a coned roof

[Anonymous]

I have a basic cone shape (see attachment) that I want to tile to give the look of a castle roof.  I've attached a sample picture of what I'm going for (but have a lot of flexibility).

My original hope was to use a combination of a rectangular pattern and the emboss command.  Unfortunately, I haven't had much luck with that.  A usually have a mixture of the following issues:

1.  I sometimes get errors from the emboss command about the surface being two discontinuous surfaces.

2.  When it does work, it doesn't want to wrap the very tip of the cone.  When I move the sketch to be emobossed to the peak of the cone, it begins to wrap around on itself and gives errors about overlap

3.  If I try and emboss just a single horizontal line of tiles at a time, the tiles lay flat against the cone and thus aren't horizontal lines anymore but rather angle downward since the embossed sketch needs to lay flat against the curved surface.

My backup plan is to just slice up the cone horizontally and then chamfer those split up surfaces.  This gives me a nice look for the horizontal lines.  Unfortunately, I have no idea how to split up the cone vertically (and all flowing outward from the spire).

Any tips would be very much appreciated!  Thanks!

[g-andresen]

Hi,

An unwound sheet metal model should be more suitable in this case.

günther

[jhackney1972]

I did one model, using @g-andresen suggestion and another to illustrate how to split a cone into separate vertical bodies.  You can use the same method to split faces if desired.  The wrapping of a sheet metal cone is a little complex but can be done.  I only applied a partial single row just to prove concept. If you need further explanation on the methods I used let me know. 

[Anonymous]

Hello John (@jhackney1972),

Thank you very much for the sample projects!  I found the second one, which used folding/unfolding very helpful.  A few questions for you:

1.  Using the document design history, step #3 is a sketch that appears to define an arc of the circle.  Was it an arc sketch, and if so, which kind?

2.  Looks like the purpose of defining that arc is that, when you get to the extrude on step #4, that slice of the circle will also be extruded upwards.  Correct?

3.  Step #6 is another extrude, but it's minimal (0.01in), and along the line defined by the arc line produced by the previous extrude.  What's the purpose of this minimal extrude?  It's practically invisible, so figuring it's related to the folding somehow.

Think I understand everything else here, thanks again!

Ray

@jhackney1972

[jhackney1972 · Accepted solution]

In the Screencast, I step through the model you already have and describe each step.  This includes the same Extrusion of .010" to make the sheet metal work.  Sheet metal must have a break in the form in order to unfold, this is why I use the center point arc to sketch the layout.

[Anonymous]

Hey John,

That's very helpful, thanks again!