Interconnecting buildings?

[Brandlin]

Mike has for some time wanted interconnecting or rather intersecting buildings.

Ive yet to make any (except the pryngul tower turret). The reason for this is twofold.

1. I want the buildings to be modular, and not stuck with one layout all the time.
2. Difficulty in finding a variety of different sized waste products to interconnect.

Well I have an idea, and I thought I'd ask your views...

I could :

A. Design specific models with interconnecting structures ( say a mcflurry cup intersecting with a Starbucks coffee cup) as a model that doesn't break down into it's constituent parts.

B. Design parts of buildings ( cylindrical only not conical) that are designed to interconnect. I can do this by having the same chord length and height (and therefore surface area and shape) at the point of interconnection. held together with magnets, allowing snap fit modularity.

A is simpler, easy to design but less flexible, likely to look more designed.
B is more complex to design, would offer a lot more variety from the same models but may look more ... odd

What do you think?

[Emberbreeze]

Was wondering if cutting a couple of slits into two pringle tubes (different heights) would allow them to become a joined structure which a mash up of the tower and stables would make a cool building.

I don't think individual buildings need to be too flexible, but maintaining the same linkages etc for use with bridges etc. would be best.

[Brandlin]

yes, cutting 'slits' would work, but you'd have to make them 'slots' (with width) and you'd have to remove either the metal end or the lip of the tube. You could then 'mash' together the existing kits.

personally i think the challenge is to intersect buildings of different diameters rather than two the same.

[Klute]

What exactly do you mean by "intersecting" ??

OK had a peek at the Pringle Tower and assume its basically where the 2 cylinders meets that you are on about. The actual joints where the sides meet isnt a problem as those are vertical and can be "hidded" with the wooden beams. If you have say one building with 6 segments and another with 5, it doesnt matter where the joints are as long as they both are on the beam verticals.
The building that sits partly on top of the other automatically hides the horizontal plane difference where it sits on top of the other.
The only problem I see is the underside of the top building. You will never be able to have complete interchangability unless all the lower building are the same diameter. Only way is to not have the underside at all but then you are losing a little "realism".

[Brandlin]

Intersecting cylinders of differing diameters and heights with parallel vertices. Such as...

all of my buildings have the same storey height, so as long as i work in whole storeys i'm ok.

I'd have to make the joins like this:

where the pink intersection is always the same size (which is going to be very limiting on the types of materials i can use). Magnets would be sunk into the pink surface.

hmmm i think this is getting fiddly!

[Lost Egg]

As much as a modular set up would be cool I think intersecting towers is probably best left to conversions...or you may well explord Brandlin.

HN

[Megatron0]

Terrain building is totally lost on me
but i like the look of all the above stuff posted!   

[Lord Fubarnii]

The multi tiered buildings seem to fit with the other buildings. When you say intersect do you mean like those multipart hamster cages you by that have lots of different  "rooms" all connected via tubes?

[Brandlin]

No by intersect I mean a chordal intersection of cylinders of differing diameters with parallel vertical vertices.

Or to put it another way, like in the picture above.

I'm wondering whether to make the buildings in separate modular pieces so you can "build your own monstrosity" or just to build them complete...

[Beastlord]

I wouldn't worry too much about seperate modular pieces at the moment... Some more nice characterful buildings would be great. They could still interact with your other buildings, just maybe not the actual intersecting bits.
Surely if you designed something to intersect with a pringles tube it could then be used with any pringles tube structure at least?