Discover the complexities of designing a fireplace mantle from scratch, including how to create a beautiful bullnose design feature. Learn step-by-step strategies to convey your intended design to clients, and how to differentiate exterior and interior materials and layers.
Key Insights
- The article provides detailed instructions for creating a fireplace mantle, with a specific focus on the bullnose design feature. The process involves using a rectangle tool, push-pulling the element, and drawing a profile template space.
- There is a clear indication of how to distinguish between exterior and interior materials and layers, which is crucial in achieving a realistic design. The writer uses the roof tag to identify exterior materials and the eyedropper tool to apply the appropriate materials to the interior and exterior.
- The article emphasizes the importance of conveying your design intentions to the client during the modeling process. This includes detailing the construction strategy and demonstrating the design using different views and perspectives.
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All right, now let's create a mantle for our hearth, our fireplace. So let's go to our Rectangle tool and draw a rectangle from this point to this point. And Push/Pull this element up 6 inches.
And let's triple-click, make group. All right, now let's draw a profile piece that we can Follow Me around this to create a nice kind of bullnose design feature for this mantle.
So let's draw a line from here to here to here to here. That's going to be the bottom of our profile. And then let's draw a profile—basically a template space.
From here, let's go out 4 inches. Up 6, up 6 inches. And then back here, and then down.
So feel free to free-draw a profile face or have some fun with this. I'm going to go to my Arc tool and draw a curve from here to here.
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And maybe I'll go around here. Then I'll draw a vertical face here. And maybe I'll do another curve.
Oops, another curve—here to here. And then I will go.
So that's my profile that I'm going to use. What you can do after you're done with this is erase these final lines, and then select this line, this line, and this line.
Hit the Follow Me button. And then hit the profile you would like to follow. I will triple-click my profile that I created for my hearth, make group.
Now let's create another portion of our mantle. I'll draw a rectangle from here to here. And I'll Push/Pull this element up 4 feet.
I will triple-click, make group. Then I will go to my guides and do a guide from this point and go in 6 inches.
And then from here, go in 6 inches. And here, go in 6 inches. Now I'll draw another rectangle from here to here.
This portion is going to be my chimney portion. What I want to do is Push/Pull this up all the way to here and then up 2 more feet so it sticks out above.
If I turn on my Roof tag, you can see that I want this little roof to stick out above. And now, I want to extend this portion out over into this space. Since we don't have enough thickness to go into the restroom, I want to go here and then only out an additional 6 inches.
Just like that. Then let's offset this top by 6 inches. Then we'll Push/Pull this all the way down to here.
This may not be exactly right, and we can figure this out later in the construction as we start detailing it. But for modeling's sake, this is a good strategy to kind of convey to the client exactly what we want to do.
Now I can triple-click this, right-click, make group. Then we could cut out this portion from the wall.
But I think it's okay. What I want to do, though, is intersect this line with this—and this line with this—
And this line with these walls that intersect. Intersect face with model. Then hit H again so you can see we have these cutouts.
So it gets a little bit cleaner edge detail. Now, I want to go turn on my Roof tag. And I want to see that as I start placing materials, I know which materials are exterior and which are interior.
With the Roof tag on, I will double-click into this group. Then select this face, this face, this face, and this face. Then Intersect Faces with Model.
With the roof on. So you can see now I have this portion that cuts. So I know that these faces right here are exterior.
This is cut through that roof layer. This is cut through the wall. This portion right here is exterior.
Then on the interior, I have this portion right here which is interior. If I were to start painting, I could go to my Eyedropper tool and click this, then paint this portion for the interior.
Then zooming out, I can use my Eyedropper tool to get this stucco material and paint these faces the stucco—and even the interior of that wall. There's no need to cut out the roof.
You can if you want to. And for the sake of this, I'll show you how you would do it. So you can double-click into the Roof layer.
I will click H to hide the rest of my model. I will select all of this material. And I will Intersect Face with Model.
So I know that I have this opening. Now that I have these lines on the top and bottom, I will go to where I'm directly above it and select a window.
And select all of these pieces here, and all of these pieces here on the interior. And then delete.
Now I have that cut out of my roof. If I were to look down, I can see that this element comes down. Now if I go back in my interior, you can see that my perspective is not very wide.
That's because if I click my Zoom tool, you can see that my field of view in the bottom right is only 35 degrees. If I change this to 65, I get a much wider angle view. I typically like to work in between 45 and 50.
It gives me a little bit more room to play without getting a very distorted kind of view on the interior. I'm going to Edit > Delete Guides. Now the final thing that I want to do in this video is import my trusses.
I will go to File > Import > Clubhouse Structural Truss. Then I'm going to turn off my Roof tag and place this right here. Now I see that this came in oriented this direction.
I want to rotate this component. I'll hit Q or use the Rotate tool. Then, holding down Shift to lock the blue orientation, I'll click this corner and click one point.
Then click 90 degrees. Then go to Move and move this corner to here. Now that I know I want this to be one foot off of the wall, I'll do Move and move one foot.
Now I want a series of these to be in the middle of these wall pieces. So I'll go from the centerline. Actually, I want to move this out one foot two inches so it's flush with that piece right there.
Now from the centerline—the center point, midpoint in group—I’ll hit Control to toggle copy along the red. Hold down Shift and click the center point here. Again, I'll do the same thing.
Midpoint in group, Control to toggle copy along red there. And then one last thing—from this endpoint, making sure I'm at the right endpoint—along the red axis, snap to this point. Then move this, not toggle copy—just move one foot two.
And there we have our trusses for the interior. I'm going to create a new tag and call this "Structure" and place these four trusses under Structure. Now I can go into my interior view in this corner.
Be careful not to get stuck behind a wall. Then I'm going to turn on my Roof, my People, and my Furniture. Then I can use Walk and kind of move backwards and get this perspective looking good.
I can even widen my field of view to, say, 60. Now I can save my file. In the next video, we're going to finalize our clubhouse by updating the final materials for our fireplace and hearth and adding in some light fixtures.
I will see you in the next video.
