Stuff

Buildings paper: Methods for Creating Curved Shell Structures From Sheet Materials

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 11:34:56 +0000

The MDPI Buildings journal has published my paper on Methods for Creating Curved Shell Structures From Sheet Materials, this is the technique used to fabricate the Lotus sculpture at this year’s Goodwood festival of Speed, here is the abstract:

This paper describes some methods for producing developable surfaces with practical applications for creating useful lightweight, rigid, jig-less and elegant structural forms from sheet materials. Multiple related techniques based on the same fundamental principle can be used to generate a variety of interesting singly curved and doubly curved shapes. The system requires a minimum of specialist software, and is described in simple steps that can be followed by the reader with access to basic 3D CAD tools.

Lotus Sculpture at Goodwood Festival of Speed

Sun, 01 Jul 2012 11:34:56 +0000

The Lotus sculpture at the Goodwood festival of Speed was in the form of a 28m high trefoil knot.

This was a whole new fabrication technique, the structure itself is a developable-surface thin shell monocoque constructed from decoiled 6mm steel plate.

I put some immersive panorama views on Google+.

3D Homography transform

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 11:34:56 +0000

A 2D homography is the well known ‘perspective transformation’, File::DXF contains a tool for performing a plane-preserving, collinear homography on 3D objects. This is distinct from the ‘taper’ tools you find in 3D modellers such as Blender.

The dxfhomography transformation is 100% reversable, passing the transformed object through the dxfhomography tool results in the original object.

This is experimental, somebody ought to add the same functionality to Blender.

ptomorph panorama stitching aid

Tue, 01 May 2012 11:34:56 +0000

The old PTStitcher tool contained a ‘morph-to-fit’ option that helps with stitching panoramas with parallax errors. This had various issues, ptomorph is a command-line tool to get better morphing with Hugin.

ptomorph is available with Panotools::Script 0.27. The morphing itself is done with ImageMagick.

What it does is read all the control points in an existing PTO project, and use these to generate a ‘morph’ distortion for each photo that results in all the control points lining up exactly.

Street elevations created with Hugin

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 11:34:56 +0000

These are some Sheffield street elevations stitched from multiple photos in the Hugin panorama stitcher.

Bailey Street, Sheffield:

Paradise Square, Sheffield:

Mural, Sheffield:

Structural Steel Design Awards

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 11:34:56 +0000

We got a ‘Certificate of Merit’ in the Structural Steel Design Awards for the Alfa Romeo sculpture at the 2010 Goodwood Festival of Speed:

Jaguar sculpture at Goodwood Festival of Speed

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 11:34:56 +0000

The 2011 centrepiece sculpture at the Goodwood festival of Speed was a 27m high ‘statue’ of an e-type Jaguar car.

The structure was entirely made from 1220mm (4’) diameter steel pipeline tube, cut, welded and bolted.

I have some interactive panoramas from this event on Google+.

China sculpture for one million Audis

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 11:34:56 +0000

This was a temporary sculpture built for a ceremony to celebrate the millionth Audi made in China.

The structure was an icosahedral core with twenty triangular steel ‘arms’ and twelve tubular steel ‘spikes’.

Alfa Romeo sculpture at Goodwood Festival of Speed

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 11:34:56 +0000

The Alfa Romeo sculpture at the 2010 Goodwood festival of Speed was two loops of steel tube tied into a ‘bow’.

Although it appears to be a freeform curve, the shape consists of eight planar curves, each of which are formed from three fixed radii rolled tubes welded together. This involved writing some code to convert arbitrary splines into a ‘triarc’ compound curve – Don’t do this, it is easier to recursively divide a spline into pairs and fit ‘biarc’ compound curves.

Alfa Romeo sculpture at Goodwood Festival of Speed

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 11:34:56 +0000

The Alfa Romeo sculpture at the 2010 Goodwood festival of Speed was two loops of steel tube tied into a ‘bow’.

Pannini article in New Scientist

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 11:34:56 +0000

New scientist printed an article on the Pannini paper that Tom Sharpless, Daniel German and myself produced, the online version is better and even manages to include my name.

Here is the article from the magazine version:

CAe paper - Pannini: A New Projection for Rendering Wide Angle Perspective Images

Mon, 31 May 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Daniel presented the paper on the Pannini projection at Computational Aesthetics 2010. Here is the full abstract:

The widely used rectilinear perspective projection cannot render realistic looking flat views with fields of view much wider than 70°. Yet 18th century artists known as ‘view painters’ depicted wider architectural scenes without visible perspective distortion. We have found no written records of how they did that, however, quantitative analysis of several works suggests that the key is a system for compressing horizontal angles while preserving certain straight lines important for the perspective illusion.

Sheffield Gigapixel

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 11:34:56 +0000

This is a zoomable Gigapixel panorama of Sheffield taken from Parkwood Springs near the ski-slope. The picture is stitched with the Hugin panorama stitcher, and is itself 1.6 gigapixels but most of these pixels are sky. It still has a lot of detail, you can (just about) read the time on the town hall clock and at least three other clocks. Unfortunately it was raining and the light was fading, it would be nice to do a series of Sheffield from different vantage points.

Some little planets in Sheffield Pizza Express

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 12:34:56 +0000

There are a couple of my photos on the walls in the Pizza Express, Devonshire Street, Sheffield.

The photos are of Devonshire Green (outside the restaurant) in the snow, and of a big wheel in Barker’s Pool also in Sheffield

Audi sculpture at Goodwood Festival of Speed

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 11:34:56 +0000

The 2009 sculpture at the goodwood festival was a steel ’loop’ with an Audi Streamliner at one end and a modern Audi at the other. I like the photo with the kids climbing all over it, something delightful we didn’t expect.

There were a lot of interesting things about this one: we wanted it to be like a continuous swooping curve, but in practice you can only have tube this size rolled to fixed radii and expect it to come back a predictable shape, so this is actually four identical arcs of steel tube and two straight sections, the arcs are rotated 6 degrees at each junction giving the spiral, all the fins are sections of cones so could be rolled without having to introduce any twisting.

Panoramas from Google in Mountain View

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 12:34:56 +0000

Some ’little planet’ panoramas of the attendees of the 2008 Summer of Code Summit at Google headquarters in Mountain View. I have some more pictures on Flickr and some more photos from San Francisco also on Flickr.

Patching spherical panoramas with pafextract

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:34:56 +0000

This is a quick tutorial on using the pafextract and panoglview tools to patch the nadir or any other part of a panorama.

Land Rover sculpture at Goodwood Festival of Speed

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 11:34:56 +0000

Gerry Judah’s website

de zeen: Land Rover Sculpture by Gerry Judah

Blender nation: Land Rover Sculpture designed using Blender

Building Design: Gerry Judah unveils his Rovers’ return

Capita Bobrowski website

Capita Symonds: Capita Bobrowski build iconic sculpture

This was a lot of fun, I created the shape by pushing and twisting a sphere in Blender, then wrote some custom perl code to slice it up into the ribbons of steel. It looks complicated, it was! The slices were created so that all the steel members were either in a vertical or horizontal plane, there are only five angles in the whole thing and all welds are right-angled - These are the kind of things needed to make something like this buildable.

Panorama animated with Blender

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:34:56 +0000

I’ve written a tutorial describing a technique for rendering a video from a spherical panorama. In this case we are using Blender, an open source 3d modeling package, but other similar tools can probably be used to equal effect.

The way this works is to load a panorama as the background for an empty scene; then set keys for the pan, tilt and zoom of the camera as you would for any normal animation. Here’s a link to the youtube video, this is it on Flickr, it seems to embed ok:

Lucerne

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 12:12:03 +0000

August 2007 was the panotools meeting in Lucerne, here is a PDF of the talk I presented and some panoramas from the event.

Managing enblend masks slides (54kB)

Panoramists on a bridge QTVR (1.1MB)

Panoramists Taking A Coffee Break QTVR (1.3MB)

Taking Panoramas On The Wooden Bridge QTVR (1MB)

More Panoramas On The Wooden Bridge QTVR (1.2MB)

Toyota sculpture at Goodwood Festival of Speed

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 11:34:56 +0000

This is the 2007 sculpture at Goodwood, it was a series of Torii gates with cars suspended between them.

Design: Gerry Judah Structural Engineering: NRM Bobrowski Project Management: Peter Harris Fabrication and Installation: Littlehampton Welding Groundworks: Tidey & Webb

CAe paper - New methods to project panoramas for practical and aesthetic purposes

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 11:34:56 +0000

German, D.M., Pablo d’Angelo, Michael Gross, and Bruno Postle, “New methods to project panoramas for practical and aesthetic purposes,” in Computational Aesthetics in Graphics, Visualization, and Imaging, 2007 (CAe 2007), (D. W. Cunningham, G. Meyer, L. Neumann, A. Dunning, and R. Paricio, Eds.), pp.13-22. Eurographics Association, June 2007.

 Recent advances in digital photomontage have simplified the creation of extreme wide-angle views from a vantage point, including the recreation of the entire sphere (we will refer to these type of images as panoramas). In order to minimize the distortion from the point of view of the viewer, panoramas have been typically presented using curved displays (such as the original panoramas, by Barker, in 1787; or several cinematographic systems, such as Circle-Vision 360, still in use), and more recently with the help of the computer (such as the QuickTime VR format). Unfortunately requiring such systems restricts their use, and little research has been done in the representation of panoramas into a flat surface. In this paper we propose the use of several geographic map projections to project a panorama into a flat surface, both for realistic purposes (where the projection can be easily accepted as a faithful representation of the original image) and for artistic purposes (where the projection is used as an artistic tool intended for the creation of an innovative interpretation of the panorama). Finally we explore the use of inclinometers and map projections to automatically project an image from a wide-angle lens (rectilinear or fisheye) into a new image that is more aesthetically pleasant.

We believe the projections discussed in this paper will be useful to photographers, artists, and the designers of virtual reality environments, all of who might require the displaying of images with a wide field-of-view.

SVG enblend input

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 21:54:11 +0000

This is an experimental technique for preparing panoramic blending masks.

The usual technique for editing masks is to open the TIFF files used as input for enblend and modify the alpha channel. This is laborious and results in what would normally be temporary data becoming work that has to be saved.

enblend-mask introduced the possibility of using external mask files, this lets you delete the (potentially huge) temporary TIFF files, but involves much pasting in an image editor like the gimp.

Abu Dhabi

Sat, 20 Jan 2007 22:02:55 +0000

Fountain in park QTVR (1.7MB)

Stuart in street QTVR (1.9MB)

Reggae band on ropes on corniche QTVR (1.5MB)

Reggae band on corniche QTVR (1.2MB)

Crowne plaza hotel QTVR (1.5MB)

Dubai Media City

Sun, 14 Jan 2007 18:08:19 +0000

Some QTVR panoramas from a walk in the park in Dubai media city, December 2006.

Lawn QTVR (1.9MB)

Lakeside QTVR (3.2MB)

Trees QTVR (3.1MB)

Bridge over lake QTVR (1.8MB)

Medinet Habu

Sat, 13 Jan 2007 16:20:24 +0000

A panorama of the first courtyard of Medinet Habu, the Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III. Luxor Egypt, March 2002

Medinet Habu QTVR (2MB)

Barkers Pool

Sat, 13 Jan 2007 12:14:53 +0000

Barkers Pool December 2006 QTVR (1.7MB)

Winster

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 23:40:56 +0000

Some photos from a New Year break in Winster Derbyshire, January 2007.

Equipment: Nikon D100, Peleng 8mm, Philopod, dcraw, fulla, hugin, nona, cinepaint, gimp

Old Angel courtyard 1 QTVR (1.6MB)

Old Angel courtyard 2 QTVR (1.3MB)

Market house outside QTVR (1.4MB)

jpeg2qtvr

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 09:42:03 +0000

A tool for assembling six JPEG cube faces into a QTVR file. This is currently a single perl script with no external dependencies, it should run on any platform.

Usage: jpeg2qtvr [options] --prefix=PREFIX > OUTPUT

eg. use --prefix=foo_ if the front, right, back, left, up and down JPEG tiles
are named foo_0.jpg, foo_1.jpg, foo_2.jpg, foo_3.jpg, foo_4.jpg and foo_5.jpg

Options

 --date date in seconds since January 1st 1970, defaults to current time
 --name title of the panorama
 --width preferred window width, defaults to 1024
 --height preferred window height, defaults to 768
 --outfile name for output mov file, otherwise result goes to STDOUT
 --pan initial pan (yaw), defaults to 0.0 degrees
 --tilt initial tilt (pitch), defaults to 0.0 degrees
 --fov initial vertical angle of view, defaults to 60 degrees
 --min-fov minimum vertical angle of view, defaults to 10 degrees
 --max-fov maximum vertical angle of view, defaults to 120 degrees
 --preview prefix for preview track JPEG tiles

It is approximately feature-comparable with freepv, the free QTVR viewer. Advanced features such as sub-tiling and header compression may be added later (but may not).

Panotools Meeting 2006

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 21:24:16 +0000

Four panoramas taken during the 2006 Panotools meeting in Bath UK.

Equipment: Nikon D100, Peleng 8mm and improvised Philopod
Technique: four portrait RAW shots handheld
Software: dcraw, fulla, hugin, nona, enblend, cinepaint, Pano2QTVR

DSC_0001-0004 QuickTime panorama (1.5MB)

DSC_0005-0008 QuickTime panorama (1.8MB)

DSC_0009-0012 QuickTime panorama (2.2MB)

Enblend Mask

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 22:03:01 +0000

This is a page explaining a couple of experimental scripts developed for working with enblend masks.

The first script is a simple wrapper, it behaves exactly the same as enblend except that it allows the use of external mask files rather than just internal alpha channel masks. Use of these mask files is automatic, for example: if myfile.tif is an image to be blended, the script looks for myfile_mask.tif and applies this as the mask before blending.

Renault sculpture at Goodwood Festival of Speed

Sun, 20 Aug 2006 11:34:56 +0000

Some photos of the 2006 renault sculpture:

Whinfell Quarry garden

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 09:19:25 +0000

Whinfell Quarry garden was created at the beginning of the twentieth century in a disused Sheffield flagstone quarry. This rarely visited garden is full of mature specimen plants and trees.

These are some panoramas taken for the World Wide Panorama gardens event, June 2006.

Whinfell redwoods QuickTime panorama (1.8MB)

Whinfell rocks QuickTime panorama (2.1MB)

Hardwick Hall

Fri, 16 Jun 2006 21:43:27 +0000

Hardware: Nikon D100 with Peleng 8mm fisheye.
- Technique: Four RAW shots, portrait, handheld with a philopod. No zenith or nadir shots.
- Software: dcraw, ImageMagick, fulla, hugin, nona, enblend, cinepaint, refocus-it, Pano2QTVR.

Hardwick Hall QuickTime Panorama (2.2MB)

World Cup Yobs Alert

Sat, 10 Jun 2006 08:30:48 +0000

Claire Lewis, Crime Reporter. Sheffield Star 9th June 2006:

Police launch biggest operation to tackle drunken thugs

… Officers holidays and shifts have been re-rostered for the entire competition with particular emphasis placed on England match days — The first of which kicks off tomorrow.

Soccer-crazy England fans have already transformed South yorkshire into a blaze of red and white with St George flags taking over.

Patriotic Lulu Landale and partner Steve Jones both aged 41, are planning to mark Englands first match against Paraguay tomorrow by taking to the streets of Crookes in Sheffield for a World Cup calvalcade.

Stained glass window at Shirley House

Thu, 25 May 2006 22:08:14 +0000

Here is a problem, the tonal range of this stained glass window in Shirley House is too wide to photograph, here is a bracketed series of pictures of the window:

Photos corrected for chromatic aberration with fulla, aligned with hugin, merged with pfscalibration and displayed with simple logarithmic tone mapping.

Fisheye to Stereographic

Sun, 02 Apr 2006 11:43:33 +0000

Fisheye images are a way of representing a photograph with an angle of view greater than 180°. Stereographic is a conformal cartographic representation that has similar properties but with less dramatic distortion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereographic_projection

This experimental tool (requires the Imager and Parse::RecDescent perl modules) converts from fisheye format to stereographic:

fisheye2stereographic (1kB)

The following pair of images show a partial 288° fisheye view created in hugin and then converted to stereographic.

Inflatables for Delirium

Wed, 08 Feb 2006 11:17:16 +0000

Inflatables for DELIRIUM; a [Cirque du Soleil](http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/ “DELIRIUM is “A Cirque du Soleil Live Music Event””) live music event, North American Tour 2006.

The patterning for this project was done with the ip-slicer software, part of the Image::RGBA perl module.

Mound stand

Mon, 19 Dec 2005 16:16:32 +0000

Replacement of the membrane roof over the Mound Stand at Lord’s Cricket ground.

The existing fabric was installed in 1986 and although structurally sound, it is showing its age with significant amounts of visual blemishing caused by pollution. Structural engineers for this project are NRM-Bobrowski and the contractor is Base Structures.

MT66 Arch

Fri, 28 Oct 2005 22:30:52 +0000

Some quick pictures showing a recent project to add an external arch support to the smaller version of the Mobile Stadiums MT66 structure. The span is slightly larger than the tent itself at 45m and the cross-section is 2×1.5m.

By removing a king-pole in this way, an unobstructed 44x48m clear-span space is created within the larger structure.

Lisbon July 2005

Sun, 31 Jul 2005 22:11:54 +0000

The Honda Sculpture at Goodwood

Sun, 26 Jun 2005 12:59:54 +0000

The Honda statue sculpture formed the centrepiece of the 2005 Goodwood Festival of Speed. The designer was Gerry Judah, the structural engineers were NRM-Bobrowski and the fabricators were Littlehampton welding.

Education Welfare Offices

Wed, 05 Jan 2005 21:45:49 +0000

This interesting Art Deco building was built in 1937 or 1938 and has had a number of names: “The Education Enquiry Office”, “School Attendance Department”, “Education Welfare Office”, “School meals” then eventually called the “Property Services Building”. It fronted onto West Street, Sheffield.

Rome

Wed, 03 Nov 2004 13:59:54 +0000

Some pictures from a short visit to Rome, most of these images have been stitched or manipulated with Hugin.

Changing Windows CMD.EXE colours

Tue, 29 Jun 2004 11:34:56 +0000

Using cygwin on Windows involves using the windows CMD.EXE ‘DOS window’. This has 16 colours, most of which are far too dark for reading text on a black background, this page is a note for myself to remember how to change them.

Right-click on the title-bar, pick ‘Properties’ -> ‘Colors’, select ‘Screen Text’ and notice that one of the colour boxes is selected, write down which one it is (ie. count it in from the left) and note the ‘Red’, ‘Green’ and ‘Blue’ values for this colour (as you will need them later when things go wrong).

Castle Howard

Sun, 09 May 2004 09:10:10 +0000

A couple of architectural photos taken at Castle Howard, a country house in Yorkshire.

An open file format for Computer Aided Design (CAD)

Sun, 17 Aug 2003 19:12:13 +0000

Bruno Postle <bruno@postle.net>

Authors note: this was originally going to be a technical specification, but I realised that the precise implementation is really not as interesting as the general concepts. If you are interested in the details, I suggest following the links and downloading the proof-of-concept code.

Tensile 1 panorama

Wed, 13 Mar 2002 23:11:54 +0000

About Tensile1

Tensile1 is the ‘worlds largest portable venue’, the overall size is 175 x 85m.

Viewer Instructions

Click and move the mouse to pan and tilt. While panning, use control and shift keys to zoom out and in.

Ptviewer (45kB)

A six-pole MT66

Wed, 13 Jun 2001 22:11:54 +0000

A twenty-pole Kayam Concert Tent

Wed, 13 Jun 2001 22:11:54 +0000

A twenty-pole Kayam Concert Tent

Wed, 13 Jun 2001 22:11:54 +0000

The No Fit State 'Flying Saucer'

Wed, 13 Jun 2001 22:11:54 +0000

A Cylindrical-mirror telescope

Mon, 05 Feb 2001 23:11:54 +0000

A proposal for building a telescope using a number of cylindrical/parabolic mirrors instead of spherical/parabolic mirrors. Bruno Postle, February 2001.

Description

This is an alternative method of constructing an optical system that involves the use of singly curved rather than doubly curved mirror surfaces. Traditional telescope optics typically use circular mirrors with a doubly curved synclastic parabolic shape. This system uses a pair of singly curved rectangular mirrors at right angles to each other to achieve the same effect.

Curve test

Fri, 12 Jan 2001 23:11:54 +0000

Original test image.

original image sliced using command ‘ip-slicer.pl 6 600 input.png’

Image Patterner

Fri, 12 Jan 2001 23:11:54 +0000

Image patterner example output

Image patterner is an extension of a technique for creating two dimensional ‘panel’ patterns of complex three dimensional surfaces. This technique has been extended to allow pre-printing of full colour designs onto (for example) fabric before cutting and assembly. Designs can cross seam boundaries without the dislocation that would otherwise be caused by the complex curvature of the surface.

Figure 1. Perspective view of surface before patterning. The flat surface at the top is the source image. The mesh at the bottom is a standard anti-clastic shape output from patterner. The surface in the middle shows how the the image is mapped onto the mesh.

IP Slicer

Fri, 12 Jan 2001 23:11:54 +0000

This is a script for taking a spherical panorama image (or a spherical globe map) and slicing it into segments suitable for sticking together into a 3d sphere, it is part of the Image::RGBA perl module on CPAN.

All the images on this page are based on the same source panorama image. The panels are reduced to fit and are links to the full size original versions.

Paper models of planets

Fri, 12 Jan 2001 23:11:54 +0000

This map of the moon was created from image data taken by the Clementine spacecraft. You can find the source map at the Solarviews website along with lots of other space related images.

This model is based on a colourised relief map of mars. Assembled from data retrieved by The Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter, an instrument currently in orbit around Mars on the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft.

Spherical projection onto a spherical mesh

Fri, 12 Jan 2001 23:11:54 +0000

The source image for this example is a nasa map of the world showing Sea algae colour. There is no significance to this image, it just happens to be high-resolution and suitable for spherical mapping. Any Image would do for this job including a spherical panorama type image.

Image patterner is capable of mapping an image onto any rectangular mesh surface, not just a sphere (which is a special case of a rectangular mesh with double curvature). Different mapping types include planar and cylindrical as well as spherical.

2000-04-29 May day Festival 1

Sat, 29 Apr 2000 22:11:54 +0000

2000-04-29 May day Festival 2

Sat, 29 Apr 2000 22:11:54 +0000

2000-04-29 May day Festival 3

Sat, 29 Apr 2000 22:11:54 +0000

2000-03-05 The Slingshots at the New Barrack Tavern

Sun, 05 Mar 2000 12:34:56 +0000

Tensile1 Photos

Thu, 13 Jan 2000 23:11:54 +0000

Tensile1 ‘The worlds biggest mobile tent’ was used here in Sheffield for Gatecrasher’s New Years Eve millenium party. I took pictures every day as the structure went-up, during and after the event.

These are some introductory images. Some were taken at previous installations of Tensile1 and some are rendered images showing the installation at Don-Valley Stadium.

Panorama links

Sun, 10 Oct 1999 22:11:54 +0000

Most of the links that used to be on this page are out of date or have been moved to the Panotools wiki. If you are interested in creating panoramas from digital photographs, I suggest you visit one of these sites:

Postle Links

Sun, 10 Oct 1999 22:11:54 +0000

Brad Postle, Ph.D. - The Postle laboratory, in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, investigates human memory function with neuroimaging, neuropsychological, neurodisruptive, and experimental psychological methods.
- Cement Process Engineers - Process engineering for the world cement manufacturing industry.
- David Postle Associates - Web site of David Postle’s business.
- Kick-Ass IT Consultants Ltd - Company website of Helen Postle.
- Postle Family Tree - A Postle Family Tree compiled by Helen Postle
- Postle family tree - Ken Postle has put a Postle family tree online with over 600 people recorded.

Sailing Barge links

Sun, 10 Oct 1999 22:11:54 +0000

DBA SBIG - Sailing Barge Interest Group - informal group mostly privately owned sailing barges
- Humber Keels and Sloops - The Humber was among the last strongholds of working sail in Britain. Even when coastal and deep sea shipping was almost entirely dominated by powered vessels, the Humber was the home of two distinctive sailing craft of ancient lineage: the Humber Keel and the Humber Sloop.
- Leonarda - Leonarda is a dutch sailing barge of a type known as a kliperark. She is 21 metres long and and capable of carrying about 40 tonnes.
- Mid-Thames Model Boat Club - We hope these pages will show the varied activities that the club hosts at our home water - the Beale Park, Pangbourne (near Reading, UK) - and takes part in elsewhere.
- Nottage Maritime Institute - Maritime Museum and Rya shorebased training estlishment in Wivenhoe near Colchester Essex
- Thames Barge Sailing Club - The Thames Sailing Barge was the main form of cargo transport on the East Coast for over two hundred years until driven out of business by rail and road competition. The Thames Barge Sailing Club own two of these traditional old sailing craft. The Club was formed in 1948 as a non profit making members club and aims to maintain their two barges in sailing condition and preserve the skills and traditions involved in sailing these wonderful old vessels.
- Thames Sailing Barge Paintings - Thames barges in art,history, surviving barges and barge wrecks. Packed with information and the site is still growing.
- the Association of Model Barge Owners - This site will develop with pages on FAQ’s, Construction Corner, sailing venues, exhibition venues etc.
- The Thames Barge web site - They were the workhorses of the East Coast before motorisation firstly in ships, but then subsequently on the roads gradually reduced their commercial viability. A number of these vessels still survive in various roles, some fully active, others used as house barges or are awaiting restoration, while many are rotting away, abandoned in creeks long ago. These pages are a personal attempt to utilise modern technology to promote these traditional craft.

Tent design Software

Sun, 10 Oct 1999 22:11:54 +0000

This is a collection of links to tent and tension structure design softwares, this isn’t complete and I’m not necessarily recommending any of these. If you have anything to add, please sign up for an account and add a comment.

Free

Sailcut - Sailcut CAD is a sail design and plotting software which allows you to design and visualise your own sail and compute the accurate development of all panels in flat sheets.
Surface Evolver - The Surface Evolver is ‘an interactive program for the study of surfaces shaped by surface tension and other energies’.
douglas zongker - polyhedra models - Nothing to do with tents, but some great cut-out and stick-together models of the 13 Archimedean semi-regular polyhedra.
ip slicer - A little tool for creating patterns to make the segments you need to assemble a sphere. It does it entirely with image files so you can turn an atlas into a globe etc..
NJIT - The New Jersey Institute of Technology have a small fortran package for patterning. it doesn’t seem to work, but maybe you’ll have more luck than me.
puzzles with polyhedra and numbers - Puzzles with polyhedra and numbers. In this site one can print copies of polyhedron puzzles (for non-commercial purposes only) and one can read several mathematical articles on the subject.
Vinicius F. Arcaro homepage - Vinicius is a Brazilian engineer developing software for shell and tension structures.
Taylors - Some AutoCAD lisp routines for manipulating polyface meshes, slicing and flattening them.

Non Free

Formfinder Light - Is an initial design software for membranes, this uses a back-end related to EasyNT .
Pepakura Designer - A tool for flattening 3d surfaces to cut out and assemble paper Pepakura models.
Soap Skin & Bubble - A sketchup plugin for designing membrane structures.
Tess3D - The new Kurvenbau lightweight structure design software Tess3D is under development.
Ligno3D - Ligno3D Designer is a CAD program that specialises in complex polyhedral objects. Click a button for ‘unwrapped’ 2D plans of all faces, with precise dimensions, diagonals and dihedral angles.
TouchCAD - TouchCAD 3.0 is a combined 3D modeling and unfolding program focusing on the ability to generate complex 3D shapes and converting them into physically buildable models.
tecnun - Not yet available, though it appears to feature: Tensile membranes design stages, from conception to realization. Analysis of prestressed nets and cables. Formfinding of double-curved structures. formfinding software for tensile structures design. Surface fitting for tensile Structures models.
MPanel - MPanel incorporates a set of design tools into a user friendly interface to assist tensile fabric designers. MPanel works inside AutoCAD as a floating tool bar, and manipulates your AutoCAD drawing from the initial relaxation of a mesh to the final production panels for you to send to your plotter or cutter.
Compad - Tentnology in the states, sell a program called ‘Compad’ for tent design/patterning.
EasyNT - From germany, Technet produce “Easy” ‘formfinding, non-linear load analysis and cutting pattern generation for membrane structures’. As well as a cheaper package called Isimem/Cadisi for conceptual design. This software is based on various University work from Stuttgart and Berlin. There is a demo version to download on their site.
Patterner for Windows - This is written by me (Bruno), Patterner uses geometrical form-finding to produce surfaces for pattern generation, you can download a demo version from this link.
Surface - From New Zealand, Surface is a program that allows you to create your 3D tent membrane shape and then works out the shape of the panels that can be cut out and joined together to form that 3D shape.
WinFAB/WinCable - This is a suite of programs, there is a demo download available. Software includes ‘WinCable - Geometric non-linear analysis of cablenet roofs. WinFAB - Cable and Membrane Design, form finding, FE analysis and patterning. WinSSDM - Space Structures Design and Manufacturing Program.’
Alias Wavefront Maya cloth - Not a tent design product. But interesting fabric type stuff.
BirdAir-Lite - This is by Bird-air in the states. Though apparently no-longer for sale.
ForTen 32 & TensoCAD - ForTen 32 is a full system for tensile structure design, analysis and pattern making. TensoCAD is a powerful tool for membrane concept design fully compatible with forten. Trial downloads are avaiable at www.forten32.com
MONSTR-2.2 - MONSTR, The name “MONSTR” is abbreviation of ‘soft inflatable structures’ (in Russian). ‘The program is designed for dynamic and static structural analysis of arbitrary textile shells undergoing distributed, concentrated and body forces.’
Rhino - Rhino is a 3d CAD package that’s popular amongst people who work with complex curved surfaces
Shape Studio - Shape studio is an academic project, I don’t know if there is a version generally available.
Sofistik - Sofistik sell various engineering analysis software including a combined membrane/steel package.
Steel&FabricCad - Steel&FabricCad is based on Window’s user interface:dialog-box, toolbars, menus, icon make it very simple to use. Steel&FabricCad is an integrated system with internal database of steel sections,cables connections,parametric steeljoints (about 40), Fabricjoints (About 25).These databases can be edited by user. Steel&FabricCad consists of various modules, which interact each other
Touch-3D information page - 3D-modeling software with integrated unfolding/unwrapping features, which an unfold just about anything.
TS-Form - Tensys Limited (no web-site) in Bath UK, have TS-Form Surface Form ‘generator for pre-stressed membrane structures. A tool for engineers and architects to aid initial design’. I have no idea whether this is for sale. Contact: 7A Northumberland Bldg. Queen Square Bath, BAI 2JB England

Tent Designers

Sun, 10 Oct 1999 22:11:54 +0000

This is a small collection of links to various fabric structure designers, this isn’t complete and I’m not necessarily recommending any of these. If you have anything to add, please sign up for an account and add a comment.

NRM Bobrowski - NRM Bobrowski are consulting engineers with a long track record of sports and entertainment structures.
- FTL Happold - USA engineers of all sorts of Fabric structures
- Ingenu Limited - We are a small but dedicated and highly experienced company providing consultancy for all aspects of tensile and membrane structure design and engineering.
- Span Design Limited - Design and build tensile fabric structures, in the UK and in europe. We offer clients a complete service to design, manufacture and install eye-catching and functional special structures, combining traditional and modern materials, manufactured to the highest standards of quality and workmanship, based on our flexible approach to design and intent to provide the client with the most cost effective solution to meet his needs.

Tent Manufacturers

Sun, 10 Oct 1999 22:11:54 +0000

This is a collection of links to various fabric structure manufacturers, this isn’t complete and I’m not necessarily recommending any of these. If you have anything to add, please sign up for an account and add a comment to the bottom of the page.

ACS Production Inc. - Based in Miami (Florida), ACS Production Inc is a creative company specialized in tensile architecture and high quality steel structures.
- Base Structures - Base Structures is a tensile fabric contractors providing a complete Design, Manufacturing and Installation service to the tensile fabric structures industry.
- Celina Tent, Inc. - We specialize in customized tents for any occasion. So whether you need a festive party tent or a romantic wedding tent, Celina Tent can build it for you.
- Acadia Fabric Structure - Acadia Fabric Structure, LLC is a manufacturer of large and small scale tension fabric products.
- Al-Rasheed Tensioned Membrane Structures - Saudi Arabian awning and membrane manufacturer.
- aluminium structures ltd - sales of clearspan structures from 3m-30m.Bespoke structures a speciality
- Anchor Industries inc. - USA makers of small and medium frame and marquee structures
- ANDES Partners Corporation - Fabricator of fabric structures of all kinds in Taiwan
- Arcosanti - I can’t figure out what these guys are all about, but there’s something to do with tents.
- Asia Tent Technologies - Malaysian firm offering: Design and patterning of membranes, Seam welding for PVC fabric and PTFE glass fabric. Design and fabrication of supporting structures. Installation of structures. Complete turn key projects.
- Baytex Manufacturing Co Ltd - New Zealand Manufacturers of canopies, marquees and tents
- Bird Air - Bird Air manufacture just about anything.
- Black & Edgington - British marquee supplier
- Cannobbio - Italian manufacturers of portable and permanent structures
- canvas emporium - we manufacture all types of canvas tents We have ready stocks as well as we book custom tent orders
- Canvas, Tents, Tarpaulins, Bags Manufacturer and Exporter - Canvas, Tents, Tarpaulins, Bags, Truck Covers and allied products manufacturer and exporter, we are in this field since last 45 years and having our own weaving dyeing, processing and stitching units, which are capable to meet our customers need, we have our valued customers in Europ, Middle East, Africa and in USA.
- Carpas Vip Events - Spanish leader clearspan aluminium manufacturer. Designers and frame innovators . Looking for a strategic business parthership in America.
- CASTRO ROJAS INGENIEROS Y ARQUITECTOS LTDA - Design, Fabrication, and installation of tensioned fabric structures
- CENO TEC GmbH - Germany located company providing design, pattnerning, manufacturing and turnkey erection of all types of membrane structures. mechanical pretensioned, air inflated, insulated stuctures out of PVC/PES, Glass/PTFE, ETFE-Foil etc.
- Clamshell Buildings - US manufacturers of clearspan temporary structures
- CLEARSPAN ALUMINIUM TENTS - Manufacturer of wide range of aluminium clearspan tent nad portable/relocatable structures in ASIA. Custom design available.
- ClearSpan Modular Structures - Manufactures the most advanced modular steel tensioned membrane structures in the world. Comprised of three pre-engineered standard families with the option for fully customized structures through ClearSpan’s advanced design process provide limitless possibilities. With the addition of “Site Specific Design Engineering” your structure is engineered and manufactured to meet the environmental conditions and regulations for your project and region. Exceptional design flexibility, our “World Class Warranty” and industry leading “Sliding Scale Pricing”, along with our “Buy Back” options, sets us apart from all other modular steel tensioned fabric membrane structure manufacturers.
- Dalo - French manufacturers of demountable structures.
- EAGLE INTERNATIONAL TENTS & AIR DOMES! - A MISSIONARY AGENCY FOR THE DESIGN AND PORDUCTION OF SMALL/LARGE POLE TENTS, METAL FRAME TENTS, CLEAR SPAN PORTABLE BUILDINGS AND LARG AIR DOMES FOR ARENAS,AUDITORIUMS,CHURCHES,MISSIONS,SPORTS COVERS,WAREHOUSE STORAGE,POOL COVERS,RELIEF, HOUSING,SALES,OTHER ..WORLD WIDE!
- ESA International AIR DOMES - Air structures for tennis and other sports. Modernist technology and materials, top prices, year round customer service.
- Esmery Caron Structures - The Esmery Caron Structures company is one the main French companies in design, manufacture and erection of textile structures, tents and tarpaulin covers. Its operating sectors cover building and the leisure industry, as well as shelters and other technical uses of textiles.
- Event solutions Tent & portable structures index - Another directory of various different tent suppliers not listed here.
- Flontex - Membrane fabrication - Cables - Tensile structure engineering - Consulting.
- India your next destination for sourcing Shelters - your needs; waterproof canvas cloth, tarpaulins, rubberized coated fabrics, tents our customised solutions; from India
- Indian Traditional Tents - Providing Indian Tradation tents and decoration utilities
- J & J Carter Ltd. - UK Tension structure manufacturers
- Architen Landrell - Design, manufacture and installation of tensile fabric structures, UK. Nice structures unusable website.
- Mahaffey Fabric Structures - Renting, leasing, and selling tents and fabric structures throughout North America and the Caribbean since 1923.
- Mahaffey Tent Inc - US supplier of tent structures
- MTT Structures - South African tent and marquee suppliers
- Nizam Canvas Tents - Manufacturers of canvas tents, Refugee, Relief, Military, Army, Marquee, Wall and Medieval Tents for Hunting and Camping
- Rainier Industries - US manufacturer of fabric and display products.
- Roder - US arm of Roder tents
- Shahid Textile Inds - We are a leading manufacturers of Tents,Tarpauluns,Canvas and other relief products and have capicity that we can supply a bulk quantity of tents in a short period.
- Span Design Limited - Design and build tensile fabric structures, in the UK and in europe. We offer clients a complete service to design, manufacture and install eye-catching and functional special structures, combining traditional and modern materials, manufactured to the highest standards of quality and workmanship, based on our flexible approach to design and intent to provide the client with the most cost effective solution to meet his needs.
- Summit Structures - frame supported tents
- Taluka tent decorators - Painted pandal tents from Jaipur in India
- Techtonics - Techtonics are a marquee manufacturer based in Hampshire England.
- Tensile Fabric - Designers, manufactures and installers of fabric structures for all interiors and exhibitions. Projects include fabric sculptures, screens, ceilings and canopies.
- Tension Membrane Structures - offers an extensive selection of standard collapsible TDI shade structures
- Tension Span Structures Pty Ltd - Australian manufactures of all sorts of fabric buildings
- Tent & Structure International Inc. - US manufacturers of portable tent structures
- Tentnology co. - USA Manufacturers of small frame and marquee structures
- Tents - Refugee / Military /Party - Manufacturer and exporters of Refugee Military and Party Tents meeting standard or customer’s specifications. Also supplying Canvas and PVC coated fabrics for Tents and Tarpaulins Sharza International, Pakistan
- Tibet Tent Shop - We continuously provide top-quality Tibetan craftwork include-Tibetan traditional tents
- Toile et Structures - A French company. Offering Textile Architecture, Tensile structures, Solar protection
- Universal Fabric Structures - Universal is a leading provider of pre-engineered and custom tension fabric structures for any application.
- World Tents - Historical Tents, Geodesic Domes, Marquees Tipis, Scout Tents and Yurts, UK.
- White Canvas Tents - Exquisite tents and marquees for any occasion, UK.
- WorldWide Tents - large, huge, party & event tents and air domes. Sales, rentals & lease. Florida, United States.

Tensile 1 "the worlds largest mobile venue"

Sat, 13 Mar 1999 23:11:54 +0000

This four acre version was erected this summer (1998) at Kempton Park racecourse in the UK.

Tensile 1 is owned and operated by Gearhouse PLC. The structure can be erected in less than a week anywhere in the world.

The boxes hanging from the roof in these pictures are 40’ shipping containers.

If you look carefully in the bottom right-hand corner of the picture above, you can see a rare photo of me.

Doom2 levels

Sat, 10 May 1997 22:11:54 +0000

Several years ago I wasted some time creating new levels for the Doom][ game.

Download them all in a zip archive, start with BRUNO09.WAD , that’s the best.

Bruno Doom Wads 1997 (220kB)

level 01 – The library

This is a level with a bit of everything, a nice indoor library and a couple of big outdoor bits.

level 03 – The Temple

A little outdoor level, some stuff to shoot at.

World of VRML tent architecture

Tue, 03 Sep 1996 11:34:56 +0000

This is a VRML source page You can include any of these objects in your VRML “virtual worlds”, design proposals or presentations under the Creative Commons share alike license. All these designs are Design Copyright © 1996 Bruno Postle.

All these surfaces were created using Patterner for Windows, and exported as you see them. Patterner for Windows is all new software for patterning 3d meshes. The demo version has 2d and 3d dxf file format export disabled, however 3d VRML export is enabled, allowing you to design and view surfaces like those shown below.

World of VRML tent architecture

Tue, 03 Sep 1996 11:34:56 +0000

Profile for mouldings

Mon, 05 Feb 1996 23:11:54 +0000

“Some interactive software for designing architectural profiles such as architraves, cornices etc..”

What’s it all about?

Mouldings are those built-up strips of wood, plaster or stone you see around doorways, windows, paintings and all over classical architecture as a cornice or architrave. Generally they are made up of smaller shapes; these basic forms are Caveto (a concave ‘groove’), Ovulo (a ‘bulge’), Ogee (an ‘s’ curve with vertical ends) and Cyma (an ‘s’ curve with horizontal ends).

CV Resume

Sat, 03 Jun 1995 11:34:56 +0000

Education and qualifications 1979 – 93

Hull School of Architecture 1991-93 Diploma Architecture.

Sheffield University 1986-89 BA (hons) Architecture.

Silver Medal 1989 RIAS Student Design Elaboration Competition.

Chiswick Comprehensive 1979-86 A’ levels – Art, Maths, Physics, Further Maths, Special Maths. Seven O’levels.

Teesside Canoe Club Canopy

Mon, 13 Mar 1995 23:11:54 +0000

This is a large steel and fabric canopy built over a building atrium.

tubular steel hoops support the fabric cover

Staffordshire Wharf Events Area Canopy

Mon, 10 Oct 1994 22:11:54 +0000

Events Arena Canopy in Manchester.

This temporary canopy covers a single bank of tiered, curved seating which faces an outdoor performance space.

University of Westminster sunshade canopies

Tue, 13 Sep 1994 22:11:54 +0000

University of Westminster, these pictures show a rendered view and a photograph of one of these cantilevered canopies.

The structure is galvanised steel with PTFE coated fabric covers.

Mepal Outdoor Centre

Wed, 10 Aug 1994 22:11:54 +0000

Mepal Outdoor Center in Cambridgeshire, This single piece membrane roof covers about 200 square metres and forms a cover for a climbing wall and various other things.

The two details shown below are of the main ‘bale ring’ and its fixing to the masts, and a close up of the decorative rain covers.

BMW Stand

Sat, 10 Jul 1993 22:11:54 +0000

Mobile display unit for BMW dealerships, this is a small aluminium and fabric canopy built for touring county shows and displaying cars, the entire structure is demountable and easily stored in a small van.

The unit is capable of being fully enclosed with wallings. The lower view shows how the entire structure is assembled on the ground and then erected by one or two people.

Small Canopy

Sun, 13 Jun 1993 22:11:54 +0000

This stainless steel canopy would cover a small area.

Steel Canopy

Sun, 13 Jun 1993 22:11:54 +0000

This is a pretty neat canopy that would do for a park somewhere, or a bus stop or a town square, or as an entrance archway.

Cardiff Bay Pavilion

Fri, 10 Jul 1992 22:11:54 +0000

The Ebbw Vale garden festival, These two structures formed a combined exhibition and audio visual center at the garden festival

The structure consisted of rolled steel hoops supporting a membrane roof and timber framed end and side walls.

Stilt House

Fri, 13 Mar 1992 23:11:54 +0000

Student project of a house in Sheffield, these are scanned photos of a housing scheme from my time at architecture school.

Kayam Theatre Tent

Sat, 10 Aug 1991 22:11:54 +0000

varying from 50m (164 ft) to 125m (410 ft), the Kayam series of mobile structures are blue in colour.

This page is very old, there are many better pictures of a twenty-pole Kayam concert tent in the photos section.

The Kayam is operated by Kayam Tents: http://www.kayam.com/

I have a VRML model of the Kayam structure