Rolling sphere - Surface

[daniem]

Hi All,

not sure if you guys will be able to assist or if I should move this to API/Dynamo.

I Created a family of air rods (attached), with their protected 'curtain' (if you will).

The surface created by each rod, could that be combined in one single surface to create a protected blanket and also remove the surfaces underneath the blanket.

[iainsavage]

I am no expert on this so maybe wait for some more responses but I think there are potentially two ways of doing this:

1. Fake it by creating a topo surface?
2. You can create surfaces in Dynamo. DiRoots have some tutorial videos which show this. Results are in this video from about 37 minutes on but to get to that result you might need to start at lesson 1 to develop points, then lines then curves then surfaces. You would need a method of creating the coordinates for the points on the surface.

As I say someone else might have a better suggestion.

[RLY_15]

Is this some kind of lightning rod coverage map?

If the rods are elements in a project, you wouldn't be able to clean up the revolve shape in each family based on the intersection of the revolves in the project environment.

From what I can tell, you have two pathways:

• Host all of the rods in a single family file where the revolve geometry is accessible in the family editor, and clean up the surfaces within a singular family file.
• Place individual rod/curtains in the project file, then run a Dynamo script to pull solids/surfaces and run intersection tests.
  • Let's assume you use solids for a second instead of surfaces. You can Union all of the solids together, then create a PolySurface comprised of just the top surface components. From there, you'd thicken the material, pull it into the project environment as a separate family, and turn off the visibility of the curtains in the rod families.

It might look something like this:

--------------

However.

You'll notice that my sample family is a revolve made from a Convex curve, not a Concave one like in your family. I don't know if this is a Revit family generation issue, or a Dynamo issue, or both, or what versions are affected, but here's what your family looks like in comparison (concave curve):

You can see the actual family at the base of the shape on the left.

The solid for 'some reason' includes the Convex arc of the circle, not the Concave one. You get a giant bean bag chair instead of a circus tent. Weird. I dont know if there's an alternative method to source the geometry here, or if there's a patch that corrects this. 

I'm getting this issue in Revit 2023 and Revit 2024.2. Don't have 2025 to test it.