Hello.

I have been a casual user of Inkscape for many years, mostly for text effects. Lately, I have been finding it invaluable in my efforts to decorate my slot car track with papercraft buildings. This has been pushing me to use parts of the program I haven't needed before. In most cases, I have found the answers quite quickly, but I have now reached a point where I am stuck. This may well be a simple case of not knowing the correct terms to search for. Anyway, I hope I can get an answer here.

I am creating a roof for one of my buildings. It will fold upwards in the middle, with a triangle closing the gap at the end to finish the sloped roof. Here's what I have so far...


Carrera-VIPBox-Roof-GableLeft by stoooo, on Flickr

I have made the triangle bounded by nodes N1, N2 and N3, with sides S1, S2 and S3. N2 and N3 are fixed to the corresponding nodes that make up the part of the roof they will attach to. S2 and S3 need to be the same length. S1 needs to be 158mm, as that is the length of the top of the wall it will be sitting on.

I need to make that triangle the right size for the gap it needs to fill, so I have the following questions:

I can use the measuring tool to get the length of S3, but is there a way to get the length of the line from its properties, as I think that would be more accurate?

Once I have the length of S3, how do I then apply that length to S2, and make S1 158mm, such that node N1 will move to where it needs to be to accommodate the necessary line lengths?

I will add a tab for gluing along S2 once I have the triangle where I need it.

I hope my questions make sense.

Thanks ever so much,
Stuart.

Draw a 158mm circle with its center at N3. Draw a circle centered on N2 so that N3 is on the circumference, probably getting close when drawing and then zooming in and using the keyboard shortcuts to scale up and down until it's right on it.
One of the two intersections of these two circles is where you want to snap N1 to.

Thanks. That's a clever idea. I'll try it out and let you know how it goes.

As far as I can tell, this has worked to within 0.1mm. Since I am cutting these out by hand, I think that's about as tight of a tolerance as I need. Thanks again for the inspiration.


Circles by stoooo, on Flickr

Now to take care of the other side

Hi.
Not quite sure - but when I load this template as a blueprint into my 3d app and edge rotate the specific polygon parts I got a very shallow dormer. Is this what you expect in the end?


Cheers
P.

Yes. The eaves are about 3cm high to match another part of the roof. I was looking for an interesting shape that made the roof *not* flat, but not so steep that it looked out of place or blocked the view. It's cool that what you found by accident is what I was actually going for How did you do it?

As I said I took your drawing as a blueprint and draw the polygons upon (2 nGons and one triangle to be precise) and bend along the 2 edges till they meet at a certain point. Then level the whole thing horizontally:




Cheers
P.

There's another bend at the points where the triangle meets the main section. The ends are going to be flat to go under a piece of plastic, then the roof rises just in the middle section. When I get it built, I'll come back and post a picture of the final result. If it comes out anything like your 3D version, I'll be well pleased.

Apologies for not getting back here sooner. I have finally started to put this together after a few weeks away from it. So, as promised, here are pictures of what I was trying to do.

Firstly, this is the item in question, a Carrera VIP Floor, which will eventually live by the pit lane on my Scalextric track. It's a great structure, but it's a bit bland. I am using Inkscape and double sided sticky tape to liven it up a bit.



The texture I used was about the closest I could find to the roofing material used at my local track, which is Croft in North Yorkshire. You can see the pit lane in the background of this picture.



As you can see, the roof piece is just flat. Adding the papercraft roof gives it a bit more height and shape, as well as adding a splash of colour.


DSCF8161 by stoooo, on Flickr

The end section is separate from the adjacent piece for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I needed two opposite end sections for each end of the row of buildings. Secondly, the middle section is the same design for every section that is not an end. Working with a whole roof piece is very unwieldy, and it doesn't actually fit on a single A4 sheet in any orientation.


DSCF8162 by stoooo, on Flickr

The edges are just plain green to match the colour of the roof and hide the glaringly plain whiteness a bit.


DSCF8163 by stoooo, on Flickr

Any future buildings will simply use two of the middle roof sections, and drop in between the first two buildings. But I'm going to need a longer pit lane before that happens. The tabs are an effort to fill the gap between the sections in case they don't go on quite straight. The camera clearly shows a thin white line between the two sections here, but it is much less than it would have been without the tabs in place.


DSCF8164 by stoooo, on Flickr

Thanks again for all the help. The circles were an inspired idea and easy to implement. It worked out pretty much exactly as I wanted it to.

Thanks for showing us your process and some real world pictures - I just love to see what people create with Inkscape! (Btw. very exact and delicate folding / glueing work, fantastic!)

Thank you, I'm glad you like it. Most of what I'm using for decoration is downloaded from other sources and can be used with little or no modification. There are a few very talented people out there making some excellent paper models in the correct scale, and I can't thank them enough for giving these designs to the community. The roof section I originally wanted to use turned out to be completely the wrong shape, so this is a piece I've had to do from scratch. I'm pleased with the result, and it is very satisfying to see the theory work out as planned. Now I can get on with making furniture for the interiors. Once I have everything done, I'll take some pictures of the end result so you can see how it all comes together.

Furniture?! Wow, that must be really, really tiny... I'm looking forward to the 'full picture' !

With the best will in the world, these things always take longer than you hope they will. I finally cut out and applied the last bit of roof today, and put the two buildings together for the first time. Keep in mind that they are the top floor of a two storey building, as there will be a pit box underneath. I think they came out great.

Front:


DSCF8177 by stoooo, on Flickr

Back:


DSCF8187 by stoooo, on Flickr

Now I'm stuck. It was always my intention to put the advertising boards on, as I have made some Dunlop panels for them. But looking at it now, I don't know if it would just ruin the effect. Aaaarrrgghhh!!! I guess I'll go and work on the interiors while I think about it.

Nice!

I just thought you might like to see the results of this project put together. I still need to finish the interior for the office, and I have just ordered some LEDs to add interior lighting.


IMG_20170511_131304 by stoooo, on Flickr


IMG_20170511_131909 by stoooo, on Flickr

Every scrap of colour in these buildings have been created either as originals in Inkscape, or modified in Inkscape from PDFs created by other papercrafters. I think they came out quite well.

Wow, this is impressive, stoooo! So unbelievably detailed, even with a restaurant... Is this place modeled after a real place?

Would anyone have the time to write out some interview questions, send them over to stoooo, and turn them, together with the answers, into a short article? (and maybe also ask other people on the forums about their cool projects, to make this a short series). It would be so cool to showcase a couple of projects, and to have the news section on the website be a bit more lively.

Glad you like it. However, I do consider this to be 'set dressing' rather than actual modelling. You guys should see some of the scenic tracks that are out there. They'd blow your minds.

These buildings aren't based on any one place in particular. As I mentioned before, the roof panels are based on the pit roof at Croft just because I thought it would look cool. The Martini themed bar is there because, well, who doesn't like a good Martini bar at the race track? The pit interiors are based on what the teams actually used during the 2015 season. They aren't exact replicas as reference pictures aren't easy to come by, but they capture the theme well enough. The desks in the office (which you can't really see very well) are scaled down versions of the desk I am sitting at right now. I got the tape measure out, and just divided the results by 32 to get an appropriate sized net to fold into shape. The whole thing came about because I love the structure of these buildings, but they are just so sterile in the original white plastic. I think they look much more attractive with a splash of colour.

I don't have a picture of it yet, but my absolute favourite detail is the racing wheel coffee table in the office. Using an old Scalextric racing wheel/tyre, I printed a Dunlop sidewall in reverse on a piece of acetate (designed in Inkscape, of course), and cut an appropriate sized circle around it to have it stick out all around the wheel. When stuck on top of the wheel, the printing is on the underside, which gives the illusion that the acetate is a piece of glass sitting directly on the wheel. It's not the most impressive thing from a technical perspective, but it was such a simple detail to add and it really helps fill out the scene. When I take the lid off to do the lights, I'll be sure to take a picture of it.

Definitely, they look very much alive, with fire extinguishers and all.

When I take the lid off to do the lights, I'll be sure to take a picture of it.

Yes, please!

Brill!