Here's the next model,
Canton Tower in Guangdong, Guangzouh, China!
This one took the better part of the week to build Since the tower shape is so funky. Going into this build, I always thought it was perfectly round with a 180 degree twist but it turns out it is an ellipse with the top section being rotated 45 degrees and offset from the center axis of the lower section. The 'vertical' beams are straight lines connecting points on the top and bottom at greater than 45 degrees from each other, which I always though they were helical. On top of that, the top is also tilted at an angle and the whole thing tapers as well so all of these add up to a ton of features and sketches just to build the outer mesh. I was luckily able to find a plan view that showed the base and top section relative to each other, as well as showed the position of the vertical beams and the offset of the inside main section from the outer mesh. The observation deck on top, not shown in that plan, has a specific layout that is hard to get a read on just by looking at photos so it took awhile to figure out how all the stairs interact with the center circular base for the antenna and how to build those sections.
Also, due to the mesh outer layer encompassing more than a 200mm height at this scale, I was unable to viably split the model for printing in materials with a smaller build volume so unlike the other models thus far, it's only available in a few materials.
All in all, I'm super happy with the way this one came out considering how far it pushed the limits of my modeling abilities. I definitely learned a few new tricks!
Here are the Solidworks screen shots:
