22nd November 2011
"A Soldier's Tale"
Drawing the Proscenium Arch for Construction
Rosalie has designed a beautiful Cubist style proscenium arch for her set that is very angled in the way that Cubism suggests. I have come up with a problem with drawing it up to be built because the measurements she gave me are not consistent, some are in centimetres, other are in millimetres but she doesnt say which is which! Also, I dont think the drawings I've got are to scale.
Lesson Learned: Make sure your references are correct.
Once I confirm that all measurements are in centimetres, and corrected the ones that weren't correct (I understand that we are creative people, not mathmeticians) I set to work drawing it up. I have to rely on the measurements that Rosie has written down as the drawing's she has given me arent to scale. If this is a problem I'm going to have to cross that bridge when it comes to it as this is all the information I am provided with!
I start by drawing a 6000mm horizontal line as a "base" line for the proscenium arch, and am going to work through her drawings, angle by angle, line by line to make sure it is as true to the information I was provided with.
I have turned on my polar tracking for this, as I need to be able to read the angles as I work round. I am having to measure each angle (using keyboard shortcut: "DAN") from either the vertical or the horizontal and using a system of measuring angles, and adding or subracting to the angle desired by the design I am managing to get through! I'm sure there is probably a quicker way of doing it, but my skills are still only so good.
So I drew it up from Rosalie's drawings but I think there is an error somewhere...
As you can see, the line of the right of the pros extends over the baseline.
Things are never easy are they?
Ok now look here AutoCAD... This doesnt even make sense.
Surely 107° plus 3° equals 110°... not 109°? I simply don't understand.
It was at this point I gave up for the day, posted the screenshot on Facebook and managed to stump friends of mine who use AutoCAD professionally.
