Here is an illustration of quite possibly the most intimidating part of my Indianapolis International Airport project... Concourse B.
Indianapolis International Airport (Weir Cook Municipal) (… | Flickr
The building is a 7-sided figure (one face to connect to the rest of the terminal, with one boarding gate on each of the other 6 faces). The sawtooth roofline features 3 peaks on each of the 7 faces, all radiating from the center. The whole thing is topped by a shallow dome that the peaks radiate out of. Per Google Earth measurements, the structure is (was) 150 feet in diameter. I will be building this in 1:400 scale so it will come out to 4.5 actual inches across.
Key features: the overhanging roof peaks... I will need a way to simulate the thickness of the roof while still allowing for folding. Also the length of each of the peaks is such that any 3 tips form a straight line (rather than forming a circle when viewed from above). So you have a circular dome with the peaks radiating out of it, and those in turn are cut to form a heptagonal outline. In addition, each of the peaks protrudes out from the wall so the effect when viewed from above is a serrated edge.
What is going to be the best way to tackle this design? I'm open to any and all ideas at this point... preferably with a bit of a walk-through. I know it's most likely going to involve 3-D computer modeling but I hope there's a way to export just the shapes for cutting then bring that into another program to paint the colors on... because I HATE 3D texture mapping! I've attempted that in the free version of 3ds Max (I forget what it was called) when making scenery objects for a train simulator route and just about lost my mind because I didn't feel like I had much of any control over texture placement and alignment... I ended up using different software for that project which was specific to train simulators.