Technical Illustrators.org Forum

I'm drawing a front-on architectural elevation view of a mansion. There is a large turret on the left side of the mansion that has a cone-shaped roof.
I would love to be able to give the appearance that the fill pattern is wrapping around this cone. I know it can done easily to a cylinder shape, but what about a cone shape. Is this possible in Illustrator?

Hi, welcome to Technical Illustrators.org!

You've probably read through this tutorial on wrapping patterns around cylinders:
http://technicalillustrators.org/2011/1 ... cylinders/

The process is almost identical, except instead of extruding a circle in step 3, you'd revolve a triangle.

1. Copy one of your turrets.
2. Cut it vertically down the middle (delete points, use pathfinder, etc. etc.)
3. Select it. Effect > 3D > Revolve
4. 0°, 0°, 0° for a flat elevation. Make sure Offset is 0 and Left Edge is selected.
5. Follow the rest of the tutorial.

This tutorial will show you mapping art onto a revolved shape (a sphere in this case):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYEk1TnYJBo

Hope that helps!

Tried it, but I'm getting a black filled shape now.
Can't see the pattern (or now "symbol") showing up.

OKAY, so I got it to work, but the one panel I am not wrapping my head around is the Map Art Panel.
The only way I can get this pattern to show up is to click the "Scale To Fit" checkbox. Unless I do that, the pattern will not show up.
I notice there are several pages on the Map Art Panel…the last page shows the actual map spread out flat in subsections.
Can someone fill me in on this page??? I don't want to scale my pattern to fit because it squishes my pattern and really distorts it.
I'm trying to use the same pattern on the other roof hatched section beneath the cone on the turret.

The 3D tools and Map Art panels are really finicky.

1. Make sure your revolved shape has a fill, but no stroke.
2. Your 3D cone should only 2 Surfaces (the pages in the Map Art panel), a circle for the base and a rectangle for the part you're interested in.
3. The white portion of the rectangle is the 'near' side and the grey is the 'far' side.
4. Turn on Preview and Invisible Geometry and visually tweak the scaling and mapping.

Let me know if that helps.

You're right, it is finicky.
Not sure why, but the only way I could make it work was to create a new Symbol that was almost the exact same size as the map area.
Hitting that Scale To Fit is the only way I can get the pattern to show itself. If I don't hit that, it does not show up. Ah well, I'm happy.
Thanks James!