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Modelling the Balton shelving system
<metaPosting> Disclaimer: I am neither affiliated with nor economically interested in the manufacturer of the Balton® shelving system. The project presented here is entirely independent. So far they don't even no it or me exist. They can not be held responsible for what I produce nor vice versa.
For decades and over many relocations I have used Balton shelves. Versatile, beautiful in my eyes, robust, easy to (dis-)assemble, nice aftermarket. Tired of designing the X-th shelf arrangement with pen and paper I came looking for a library of virtual parts.
Alas, all I found was a monolithic assembly on 3D CAD Browser, which is nice but merely an appetizer. It is neither a library nor complete, leave alone parametric or accurate (enough for the perfectionist I am). Not even the manufacturer's web site offers something, and I did not want to ask. OK - so go make one myself.
Chosing SH3D for visualization was a no-brainer, given that all I have is Linux, little money (spent it all on Balton), a dinosaur of a PC and some CAD practice. SH3D is easy to learn, not demanding yet powerful, really portable (kudos to E. Puybaret), does all I need and spares me from complexity I do not need.
Plus: soon I learnt it has gathered a very helpful, competent and friendly community.
After all, for the first time in my digital live I feel like opening up a little and post my progress, problems, ideas or ask for advice every once in a while. It will be too sparse for a blog. That's why I create this thread.
My hope is to learn a lot, share knowledge, convey the newbie's view to the tool, get feedback, and end up with something that might be useful for more folks than just me. BTW: all geometry will originate from parametric solid models I would not hold back in case someone is interested. FreeCAD is the tool.
@Manufacturer/brand owner: I recognise the Balton® trade mark. It became my choice solely because I possess such products. This project is entirely non-commercial although I retain all copyright and exploitation rights until further notice. All product data used in this project (dimensions etc) have been lawfully derived, are freely available to the public, or based on guessing. </metaPosting>
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Cheers - Joe //
Wait - simple? The example is 9 times as coarse as the final, rather small item meaning the number holes of multiplies by ~100 or more. Now, try to model this in a way that aged equipment can juggle many instances of the furniture, being (or pretending you are) a greenhorn.
Promising ideas came to me overnight from Keet resp. Daniels118. Friday I will try them and report.
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Cheers - Joe //
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Re: Modelling the Balton shelving system
Looks like a perfect project to create a Furniture Library with all Balton elements. Using the models in such a library you can construct any system you want.
If you need help with specific models let us know. Considering your 'dinosaur of a PC' it probably is a good idea to optimze the models for size and face count, something I've been doing to the extreme for the past years because I work with very large projects that 'stop moving' when they get too big. Extremely optimizing models has helped a lot for that although it requires extensive use of Blender besides Sweet Home 3D.
One tip that will help you immediately; do not use cylinders to create the wire shelves or posts. Use a 'cylinder' with a limited number of sides, I always use 12 sides (Dodecagon ) and when you smooth these in Blender is looks like a normal rounded cylinder but much smaller in size. The Shapes library you can download at Dodecagon.nl has such cylinders but they are also very easy to create in Blender. If you use the Cylinder12 from the Shapes library make the top and bottom invisible before export if they end in another cylinder. That reduces the number of faces in the model resulting in a smaller object. (Parts made invisible before export are not exported, a realy easy way to separate parts from an existing model.)
If you have the exact dimensions of models I'm willing to help with creating a few of the models and creating a Furniture Library. I think the non-texture models are pretty easy and quick to create.
If you want to share models or projects you can use a host like mediafire. Sweet Home 3D also has a 3D models site on sourceforge for sharing models.
---------------------------------------- Dodecagon.nl 950+ 3D models, manuals, and projects
Germany, Berlin
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Re: Modelling the Balton shelving system
Keet,
I'm thinking pretty much along your lines. Especially regarding the library and the data minimization.
That's why I model parametrically in CAD. Many real Balton parts are made from wires. In CAD, all my wires are extrudes, with a single common ancestor for their profiles. Topologically, that may be any closed curve; so far it is a circle. When, let's say, 3d-printing a clamp for a lamp, the cheek insides will be round and smooth. Then, for use with SH3D, a heptagon might replace the circle, and instantly every wire has 7 edges. If heaven sends me a workstation, I'll take pleasure in replacing it with a meticulously handcrafted dodecagon featuring a double diagonal from 11:30 to 6:30.
The library idea is indeed older than my decision for SH3D. The top disclaimer is there just in case it would go public. Beware that I might remember your offer to create that furniture library. I still couldn't get the FLE 2.x to run on Ubuntu 22.04 with Nvidia graphics.
My aspiration to go with as few pixels and triangles as possible can be read from that thread, and is partly inspired by your own data reduction project.
You made me even consider opening all wires' ends, making them pipes. They are thin, and thanks to backface culling this would hardly be visible. But it's gonna be tricky, as the parent models are solid prisms that just do have lids. So, I would have to establish some automatic to identify those in the derived meshes and peel them off. I am reluctant to automize FCad or blender, as I'm an even fresher-man to python than to SH3D. OTOH, my mesh-deriving-and-scaling procedure is already an FCad macro in python - first step made. Anyway, I will go after that only if my PC dinosaur gets really sucking and demands pipes. And meanwhile sneakily hope that someone else needs it more badly than me and crafts it.
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Cheers - Joe //
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Re: Modelling the Balton shelving system
Taming Textures
struggled two days, made test textures, objects, mappings, even set up a test sheet to keep track of which change causes what geometrical effect ... tried so hard to wrap my head around the texturing logic of SH3D - to no avail. In the witching hour it happened: all of a sudden SH3D produced a perfectly plausible mapping of two textures on two faces where all these figures are mutually not similar.
Box dimensions 100x80*60 cm, green rectangles scaled to 100%, blue squares to 75%. The black "teeth" of the rulers were 1 cm squares after texture import. Count by yourself - it just fits. If you look sharp you can read some cm numbers in the green.
I wish I could figure the minimum set of preconditions to get this. I have a hunch it that the uv-math throws up if in addition to some selected faces with textures there is a general material for the entire object with another texture.
If it is of general interest, I am willing to elaborate it.
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Cheers - Joe //
Germany, Berlin
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Re: Modelling the Balton shelving system
Taming Textures
I wish I could figure the minimum set of preconditions to get this.
... not necessarily a minimum set but it works somehow:
In blender, assign materials to the faces to be textured but do not define textures.
Still in blender, assign a material to all remaining faces, so no faces are left "naked".
Export the object, import it as furniture in SH3D
Apply the material properties in SH3D. You'll find all blender-assigned material names assigned to the respective face groups and can texture them here.
This way, the textures are not distorted, and true to scale.
But Request for advice: How to align a texture with the textured faces? See *.sh3d and *.pngs:
How is the placement of the texture's origin determined/controlled? Mathematically, it maps to the cross on the red diagonal extension. No face, vertex, object, nor bounding box corner there. Offsets x=y=0%, angle=0°, scaling=100%.
How to avoid the vertical offset when mapping the same texture to two parallel faces? Vertical view angle perpendicular to the face. The rear mapping (green "shadow" as the green is transparent) has an actual vertical offset to the front one. It's not a perspective effect like the horizontal offset.
Have I missed something or are there workarounds?
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Cheers - Joe //
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Re: Modelling the Balton shelving system
Mirrors and Transparency
I gathered experience with SH3D & textures and learned a lot especially from @Keet and @GaudiGalopin3324, could get the perforation right and made my peace with the not-achieved.
But, the perforated shelves are from Chromium, thus reflective. Task: make a perforated, rough metallic mirror. - So far, I failed on the roughness. However, based on the workflow for semi-transparency, alpha textured mirrors turned out feasible by a technique called "green screen". It consists of map controlled compositing.
For semi-transparency, the mirror's alpha was controlled by a single blending weight. If instead of this global weight, an alpha map is used for compositing, the way is paved for texture controlled reflectivity.
The alpha map results from rendering the transparency texture in front of a green screen, no other objects visible. This time, the compositing took place in Gimp. Intermediate images, *.sh3d and gimp's *.xcf tell much of the story.
The output has severe flaws and errors, but they could mostly be overcome by smarter preparation and more work on the intermediate steps. At least the texture casts a shadow. Peek through the holes in the bottom rows - you can partly see the light ovals. I promise I didn't do any retouching - pure full-frame compositing.
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Cheers - Joe //
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Re: Modelling the Balton shelving system
Mirrors and Transparency GaudiGalopin3324 has achieved some amazing results towards rough metal sheen. He shared them with us and also kept my spirits up when I was about to give up.
Coming soon Now it's time to actually produce the first parts and apply the findings about surface finish. The geometric detail is work in progress, and many special parts like cabinets, sliding doors, drawers etc. are still waiting to be modelled. That's what I will will pursue next.
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Cheers - Joe //
), a dinosaur of a PC and some CAD practice. SH3D is easy to learn, not demanding yet powerful, really portable (kudos to E. Puybaret), does all I need and spares me from complexity I do not need.
) and when you smooth these in Blender is looks like a normal rounded cylinder but much smaller in size. The Shapes library you can download at Dodecagon.nl has such cylinders but they are also very easy to create in Blender.
graphics.
