Skinning my Boat?

 From:  Michael Gibson
1264.4 In reply to 1264.3 
Hi Brian, here is one method.

First of all a bit of curve re-arranging. The third rib back from the front is in 2 pieces:



Select those 2 pieces and use Edit/Join to make them into one single curve. Then take the long central curve:



And split it into 2 pieces using the back-most rib as a cutter. To do this, select the long piece, run Edit/Trim, select the back-most rib and right-click, then at the point where the prompt is asking you for which pieces to discard, right-click or press Done there to keep all the pieces. That will leave you with this small piece:



Now you can select these ribs:



And construct a surface there by doing Construct / Sweep, and select the 2 longer curves as the rails. For the back one way is to select these 3 curves:



And then do Construct / Network. Then I mirrored those pieces over:



You'll see that the boat is a little lumpy - you may need to edit some of the profile ribs to kind of change in a sort of more gradual manner to reduce lumps.

I also turned on control points and edited the tip where the 2 long pieces come togehter so that they all came to a common point, right now they are a little separated there.

There are some other ways that you could approach it too - one that may be interesting is to focus just on the ribs and not the longer rails at all, and then you can do a Loft through those using the "Loose" option which doesn't tend to make as bumpy or wiggly shapes.

Hope this helps!

- Michael