I am pretty sure what I want to do here is beyond my abilities with the information I have. I am hoping someone out there with a more artistic eye, and better abilities with surfacing can help. I am trying to make a scale remote control model of this airplane: http://www.vansaircraft.com/public/rv-6int.htm I have all the drawings of the bulk heads and airfoils so the main structure of the fuselage, wings and tail surfaces aren't a problem. Where I am stuck is on the stuff there are no "detailed" drawings of, namely the cowl, canopy, and wing tips. I did manage to get a pretty nice wing tip, but my cowl attempt is very bad and I don't want to think about the canopy. I know a guy that has one of these planes that can take a few measurements if need be, but most of the stuff I need measurements on are very hard to measure. I am willing to part with $100 to get this done, maybe a little more. I have enough of the fuselage done for you to start work on the cowl and canopy, and I have some scale drawings with good top and side views of the plane. My goal is to have a good model of the cowl and canopy so I can create sections every 1/2 inch or so, cut them out and make a plug and mold so I can form the cowl from fiberglass and the canopy from Plexiglass. Anyone out there willing to tackle this? I would also be willing to share all my files I plan to send to the laser cutter to cut out all the wood for the plane. -- Chris W Bring Back the HP 15C http://hp15c.org Not getting the gifts you want? The Wish Zone can help. http://thewishzone.com
Chris, you may want to go to Mike Wilson's sit http://www.mikejwilson.com and download the 757 he modeled. It's in the 9/11 area. You could get alot of usefull ideas from this model, it's very good. Basically, you just model half of everything and then mirror it Mark
It's not out of the capabilities of SolidWorks... Anyway reading above remember the good old days when Joe Dunne use to post? Funny to see that. Ken
HI There, You should be able to achieve what your after using lofted surfaces or surface fill. Start with sketches of the profiles and work from there. Splines are good to create smoother surfaces, and it can help to break things down into manageable bits rather than try all at once. Some tricks I use are: If you want a surface fill tangent to an edge, but the edge is just a line (which the surface will doesn't allow as a tangent condition) then extrude the line (providing it's on a plane of course) and then you can use that edge for the fill tangency. Experiment with surface fill and different guide-curves. For example you can draw a flat sketch (such as a circle) and the surface fill will give you a pretty planar surface, but with a little bit of guidence you can make the surface do all sorts of fun things - pretty smooth too. Better be off now - post your part for people to play with - you'll get something pretty quick I'm sure. Lee
Ok here is a directory with the part and lots of photos of the airplane http://cdw.homelinux.com:8087/stuff/RV-6and7/ For some reason I can't get those last 2 sketches to make a loft. And that loft would be the back half of the canopy. The front half is the hard part. The loft that is the cowl is very ugly. -- Chris W Bring Back the HP 15C http://hp15c.org Not getting the gifts you want? The Wish Zone can help. http://thewishzone.com
Chris: It looks like you could benefit from taking some models other folks have done and going through them. The reason the cowl is ugly is that you're trying to do too much at once. The circular feature should be a separate feature altogether. In fact, the top and the bottom of the circular feature should be separate features. You don't get extra points for lofting the whole thing in one go. You might also think about using more loft profiles instead of the guide curves, or at least use the gc to build the extra sections. To do the cowl as a solid, you should probably try to get the same number of sketch segments in the loft profiles. The canopy is actually easy, but there are some problems with the rest of the model that complicate issues. There is a lot of underdefined geometry. Splines are great, but the ends and the symmetry need to be defined. Also the fuselage loft sections were missing some fillets so it looked pretty funky. Also, you might want to consider using a layout sketch with something like this. A parent sketch at the beginning of the part that you can refer back to and make relations to. Also, for something like this, why didn't you use sketch pictures? That would allow you to trace stuff. Anyway, there's a lot that can be said, but it looks like you have your work cut out for you. Here's an "instant web noodle" of the a few features I blocked in. Personally, if I were going to do more work with this, I would reconstruct it to make some of the parametrics easier to work with. Mine is kind of ugly itself because I didn't take time to fix the underlying issues. http://www.3diw.com/login.asp?u=4248&f=8207214 there is no password, just hit login. matt
Another great way to get a head start on this type of work is to download and work your way through Ed Eaton's three Curvy Stuff tutorials: http://www.dimontegroup.com/ Jerry Steiger Tripod Data Systems "take the garbage out, dear"
