I had a problem syncing to C4R last weekend. Checking the cache I realised that the file size had jumped up rather alarmingly. It’s the Site Context file for the Board of Trade building on Project Soane, and I had been working up some design development studies using Phasing. At first I thought phasing might be the problem (can definitely slow things down) but the way I fixed it was by simplifying my Corinthian Column family.
It’s a massing study so I don’t need all that detail anyway. But next morning I was struck by the idea of using a new approach to a simplified Corinthian Capital. Basically it uses two octagonal blends, (one rotated 22.5 degrees in relation to the other) to stand as placeholders for the two rows of acanthus leaves. For the scrolls I used extremely simple extrusions and the whole thing turned out to be extremely lightweight: 600kb as opposed to the 6mb of my original. I had been quite proud of getting a Corinthian column down to 6mb. One of the versions we…