I am trying to model a canopy that sits around the top of a column. I could do it by editing a sliced sphere but I have created a set of splines that represent the ribs of the canopy (blue lines) and intermediate splines that represent the ‘bulge’ of the canopy fabric (brown lines). I wondered if anyone had a better technique to generate a nice clean mesh of this within max using these splines.
I hope the screen grabs help:
link the tops of the splines together.
attach them all together
add surface modifer
ta-dah
Hi Tricky,
Another way… in AutoCAD…
Set SURFTAB1 to control the mesh density (say 20)
Use RULESURF to mesh between your 2 curves.
Cheers.
subdiv modelling will do it, build a low poly control mesh and then put turbosmooth or the like on top 
Im not even going to mention what that looks like.. :lol:
lots of them from every angles,lots of burger buns :lol:
a balloon knot? :twisted: :shock:
:lol:
Wow - thanks all. I like your image Ryan (though not sure why…???). What technique did you use for that?
I clearly need to learn about polymodelling! Don’t know anything about it.
:o :lol: 
And that’s why you think that you need ACAD for modeling 
The modeling tools in Max are lightyears beyond autocad, you just need to know how to use them. I recommend doing a couple of the tutorials that come with Max, perhaps the character and spaceship ones. It may seem that they’re way off tangent to the kind of work you do, but you’ll learn tools that are invaluable.
We do almost nothing but archviz, but if we modeled the same way that most archviz people do, then it would take us forever, we’d hate it, and we’d end up doing our modeling in something like sketchup or formZ. But since we’ve learned tools that character modelers use every day (like editable polys), we can model anything we want in max and most archviz modeling becomes fairly trivial or simple.
As an example, I did something similar to this, a rounded awning system you see on storefronts, and it took me all of about 5-10 minutes with editpoly tools to create something fairly detailed with relatively low polygon count. If I had tried to do it with booleans or simply modifiers, it would have taken forever, been messy and high poly, and looked like crap.
hi tricky,
i can receive PM but i cannot send. all sent messages goes to the outbox only. i wonder why.
is there any way i can contact you?
They sit in the outbox until the other person checks their PM.. I believe.
Likewise - and this - http://www.cg-academy.net/pages/topic\_modelling/dvds\_modelling\_advanced\_02/dvds\_modelling\_advanced2.php
Is an excellent training dvd for technical/detail modeling.