Advanced Cathedral

Advanced Cathedral

Advanced Cathedral builds the same family of raised-arm shanks as the classic Cathedral command, but the arm is no longer a single fixed section swept from top to bottom. Here the arm is defined by a list of profiles placed along it — each one with its own shape, width and height — and the shank is swept through them. That is what lets you thin the arm where it meets the head, let it swell at the shoulder and finish wide at the bottom, all inside one object.

On top of that it carries the full gem system: a run of stones down each arm with uniform or graduated sizes, a channel, prongs or a pavé micro-setting with its cutters, and the drills.

Running the command opens the gallery of saved Advanced Cathedral elements. Click one to preview it in the viewport, double-click it to open its parameters, or press Edit in the header to start from the shank shown in the viewport.

Finger Size

Sets the ring size the whole shank is built around. Everything else — arm height, profile positions, the gem run — is measured from that circle, so change it before you fine-tune the rest.

Shank

The first tab holds the arm itself: its profiles, its overall geometry and the bridge.

Profiles

The list shows every station along the arm, numbered from the tip (1) down to the bottom of the ring. Each row carries a colour badge, a thumbnail of its cross-section, and buttons to duplicate, edit or delete it. The colour of each badge matches the handles drawn on that station in the viewport, so you always know which row you are dragging.

• Add profile (the orange-bordered button above the list): asks you to click a point on the shank curve in the viewport and inserts a new profile there. It inherits the width, height and shape of the nearest existing profile, and the list re-sorts itself so the numbering always follows the geometry.
• Duplicate: same thing, starting from the width, height and shape of the row you clicked.
• Delete: removes an intermediate profile. The two end profiles — the arm tip and the ring bottom — are fixed and cannot be removed; their delete buttons are disabled.
• Apply All Profiles: when on, every station shares one single cross-section shape while keeping its own measurements — change the shape anywhere and all of them follow. Turn it off to give each station an independent shape.

Clicking a thumbnail or the edit button opens that profile inline:

• Profile asset: pick a cross-section from the library, or open the editor to draw your own. In shared mode the choice is applied to every station at once.
• Width: the section’s width at that station, in millimetres.
• Height: the section’s height at that station, in millimetres.
• Position: where the station sits along the arm, from 0 at the tip to 1 at the bottom of the ring. Only intermediate profiles have it — the two ends are pinned.

Accept returns to the list keeping the changes (they are applied live as you type); Close reverts the station to how it was when you opened it.

The same values are available as handles in the viewport: a centred width handle and a height handle on each station, plus a slider handle that moves an intermediate station along the arm. Hold Shift while dragging a width or height handle to apply the new value to every station at once.

Shank

• Height: how far the arm tips rise above the top of the ring.
• Opening: the gap between the two arm tips — in practice, the room left for the head or the centre stone. It also has its own centred handle in the viewport, at tip height.
• Tip inclination: how much the tip leans, by tilting the tangent at the end of the arm.
• Cap length: the rounded dome that closes the arm tip. At 0 the tip is cut flat.
• Tangent point: where the arms leave the ring. Dragged to the right the arms emerge near the top, giving a short, steep cathedral; dragged to the left they emerge lower down, past the equator, giving the long, nearly straight arm of a tall cathedral.

Bridge

The bridge is the piece of metal that spans the top of the ring under the head.

• Bridge (toggle): builds the bridge or leaves the arms open.
• Bridge width: how wide the bridge is across the ring.
• Bridge thickness: how far it stands out radially.
• Bridge fillet: rounds the bridge edges. At 0 they stay sharp.
• Bridge diameter: the diameter of the central disc. It only shows when it is larger than the bridge width and the bridge is not opened.
• Open angle: opens a V in the centre of the bridge. Above 0 the bridge becomes an open one and the central disc disappears.

Gems

The second tab sets the stones running down the arms and how they are held. Everything below is inert until the Gems toggle at the top is on.

Sizes along the run

• Gradient mode: Uniform gives every stone the same size; Gradient 2 Points interpolates between a top and a bottom size; Gradient 3 Points adds a middle stop.
• Gem size: the single size used in Uniform mode.
• Top / Bottom: the sizes at each end of the run, in gradient mode.
• Middle: the size at the middle stop (3-point only).
• Middle pos: where that middle stop sits along the run, from 0 to 1 (3-point only).
• Min distance: the minimum gap left between stones.
• Vertical: raises or sinks the whole run relative to the arm.
• Margin: where the run starts, measured from the arm tip.
• End: the angle at which the run stops, going down the arm.
• Gem shape: Round or Square.

Margin, End and, in 3-point mode, the middle stop also appear as labelled handles sliding along the gem run in the viewport, so you can set the extent of the run by eye.

Channel

The seat the stones sit in.

• Inner width: the width of the channel rail. It follows the stones, scaled by this value.
• Inner height: the depth of the channel.
• Bright cut: the height of the bright-cut edge between the metal and the stones.
• Inner margin: how far the channel is inset from the inner side of the arm.

Prong Settings

Three options, chosen with the icon buttons: no prongs, shared prongs, or pavé (micro-setting). The tuning parameters below appear for shared prongs, and the cutter sections further down appear for pavé.

• Prong height: how tall the prongs stand above the stones.
• Prong grow: millimetres added to every prong’s diameter, all growing equally.
• Min diameter: the smallest a prong is allowed to get, whatever the stone size asks for.
• Prong distance: pushes the prong line sideways — positive values move the prongs further apart.
• End prongs: Single end prong puts one centred prong at each end of the run, Double end prongs puts one on each rail.

Cutters and V-Cutters

Visible in pavé mode. They carve the seats and the bright-cut grooves under the stones.

• V-Cutters (toggle), Boolean (toggle) and Remove channel (toggle) at the top of the section: whether the V-cutters are built, whether the cutters are actually subtracted from the shank, and whether the channel is removed underneath. With the boolean off the cutters are shown as preview solids and are baked as separate objects on Accept, so you can subtract them yourself later.
• Start | Height, Start | Width, End | Height, End | Width: the section of the cutter at each end of the run. When Mode is Both Sides the start and end values stay locked together; Independently unlocks them.
• Length: how far the cutter runs.
• Move in Z and Move Middle in Z: raise or sink the cutter, and its middle, relative to the girdle.
• Shape: U, V, Square, Trapezoidal or French.
• Shape Scale: blends the chosen shape between its rounder and squarer extremes.

The V-cutter block repeats the same Start | Width, Start | Height, End | Width, End | Height, Length and Move by Normal, with its own Mode (Keep Start and End locks the two ends together, Independently frees them).

Drill Settings

Two icon buttons choose between no drill and round drill; the parameters below appear only with the drill on.

• Allow intersection: lets the drills intersect each other instead of being trimmed back.
• Show: draws the drill solids in the preview so you can see exactly what is being removed.
• Height top, Height crown, Height girdle, Height pavilion, Height drill: the vertical breakdown of the drill profile.
• Size top, Size drill, Size bottom: its diameters at the top, at the drill and at the bottom.
• Gem inside: how deep the stone sits inside the drill.
• Drill type: Gemstone shape follows the stone outline; Round, Square and Hexagon force a fixed section.

Working with the panel

• Refresh in the header recomputes the preview. The shank is computed in the background, so you can keep adjusting while it works.
• Save defaults stores the current parameters as the starting point for the next run. Right-click the same button to clear them and go back to the factory values.
• Save stores the current shank as a local element, so it shows up in the gallery next time.
• Accept bakes the shank, its stones, its prongs and — in pavé without the boolean — its cutters, all as one editable Artisan object.