I was looking at the Composite Order and came across a capital from Romania which has an interesting version of the Acanthus leaf.
I decided to have a go at modeling this in Revit. I want to keep things as simple and lightweight as possible. In a BIM context, we are not going to capture every delicate ripple of a vegetation inspired ornament. My aim is to capture the essence with a “few bold strokes”. The magic of the human brain will do the rest.
The first piece of geometry is a flat central rib, with a hooked top. This is a simple sweep on a curved path, cut by a void extrusion running at right angles to the path.
In the first iteration the hook had a flat top, but by adjusting the shape of the void I was able to soften this.
The side leaves are created in a very similar manner, but the sweep profile is just a gentle curve, without the hook at the top.
So that gives me the first row of leaves, to swap out in my standard Corinthian capital. You can see…