Ground Floor Arches

Arches:

I have smoothed the arches to see what they are like and I have had to add edge loops and also remove some vertices that appeared from somewhere. After doing this the tops of the arches were mishaped, flat and didnt look right. I removed some edges and more vertices to create a smoother look.

I like the look of the arches now they are rounded.

In the images from a google search the arches have detail to them, rather than being just one solid piece. To get the effect I have gone with I selected the front faces of the arch and selected extrude. By selecting that made the arches change shape (with out me touching the polygon)so I selected extrude again to create another subdivision and then started to move the faces. Once I was happy I removed the edge loop around the top outside to get a more rounder look, it was too square for my liking. I then had to add edge loops to the bottom of the arch near the columns as I didnt think it looked right. I also used the interactive split tool in some spaces where the edge loop didnt connect.

For the lights in the archways I tried a mental ray texture, it is a greyish black tone then I played around with the transparency and other elements. I havent decided yet if this is what the exact material I will go for.

After I created the arch I deleted the ones I had previous and used duplicate special to create more of the smooth version. I ended up having to move the columns and the lights slightly on all of them as the smoother version was a bit smaller than the original ones I created. It didnt take too long to fix. 

The shape of the arch carries on to the back wall where the entrances to the shops/cafes are so I selected the back faces of one of the arches and pulled it back. Moving one allowed for the rest to follow as they are duplicates. Now for the fun part :/ There is a space between these archways (as seen by a curve in the other picture). I tried to use a boolean but it proved unsuccessful after many many many attempts. The first few times caused the geometry to disappear. After looking the issue up on forums I saw some good advice: Check the polygons are closed...After looking I noticed the bottoms of the arches were open, I filled the hole and tried again but that again didnt work. Then on another forum I saw 'some times if you delete the history it works', so I tried that and YAY! it worked. And then, I dont know why, I deleted it to see if I could create both holes at once and now it wont work again (trying both or just one). So I thought of creating the shape using a cv curve (again, in the picture below). I dont even know where to start with that, it has a mind of its own. Nothing seems to want to work at the moment. The fact it worked at one point means it will work again so I havent lost my faith in this!

Now to get the roof sorted. The objects on the roof are on a bit of a ledge so I added some lines using the interactive split tool and then selected the edges and moved them to create the edge they are on. I then did the same to create the peak of the roof. The roof also has sky lights in which I need to add.

When I extruded I realised I hadnt changed the division number on my extrude tool. I had it set to 50 from when I was using a cv curve. I will start this section over, now the tool has been reset!