A couple of things: Wouldn't an easier way to create compound shapes be to uncheck "start new shape" on the command panel?

Also, I have a customer who is doing concept creations of architectural buildings (real estate developer) where they don't actually need or want the buildings to be "perfect cad drawings". The easiest way I found was for her to use block modeling / boolean objects. I went back and tried applying this concept to her situation, but found that when I was trying to create a simple 4 wall building, there was no easy way to join all the 4 walls. For example, if I make three walls with multiple windows and another wall with doors and windows, I cannot attach the different walls together as they won't extrude properly. I could convert all the walls to an editable mesh after the extrude was applied to them individually and then connect them that way, but that would not give me the ability to go back and move windows and doors at the subobject level. I could also group the walls together, but I find that cumbersome to work with when applying materials, etc.

So my question basically is -- "is this spline creation method suited to creating an architectural - 4 walls, roof, floor - concept model?" and "is there a method other than a combination of boolean and box modeling better suited to create complex architectural models" (other than creating these models in a cad program)

>>Wouldn't an easier way to create compound shapes be to uncheck "start new shape" on the command panel? <<

Hi Joy,

I'd used to introduce compound shapes that way but found that people often got confused and didn't develop a good understanding of what was really going on. It's important to fully understand the Attach/Detach process, especially when working with CAD files. Using Start New Shape is convenient when you're creating in Max/VIZ and understand the process.

>>Is this spline creation methods suited to creating an architectural-4 walls, roof, floor <<

Yes, it certainly is. I generally just create each wall as a separate entity and use the Align tool to assemble the building quickly and easily. I've redone my website recently and have removed a bunch of images that showed many buildings, some quite complex, that were all done that way but there are still a couple of buildings up there now.

Letting the walls overlap at the corners is usually fine, especially if there's a corner board type trim, but if it were brick I would just apply a Edit Mesh modifier to the extruded wall and move the vertices to create a miter.

I also never used groups, but find Named Selection Sets a more useful in organizing groups of objects while retaining easy access to the individual objects.

You might be onto a good topic for a continuation of the series of tutorials, Joy. That would tie some of the concepts together that I've covered already in the videos like; reference coordinate systems and the Align tool.

Thanks Joy, hope things are well.

Ted

Thanks for your response. I'll continue playing around with this. I also use selection sets instead of groups whenever I can.

You've been a good help. I recommend your books to all our customers. :-)