Modeling Complex Shapes/Angles for a Cockpit

 From:  Michael Gibson
7138.6 In reply to 7138.5 
Hi Ryan, well there are a few different ways you can approach angled planes. One would be to draw some lines in a 2D view like the top view and then move one of the lines vertically in Z until you reach your desired angle and then build a surface between them with loft.

It's also possible to draw an angled plane directly all in one shot by using the Draw solid > Plane > 3pts command, place the first 2 points at the bottom edge of the plane and for the 3rd point go to the 3D view and drag a construction line up vertically in the z direction and then you can snap onto that construction line to give your plane an angled elevation. That looks something like this:


You can also start with an axis aligned plane and then do repeated rotations in different 2D views to get it to different angles.


Probably a starting point would be to start with one 2D profile curve like this:



Extrude that out to make a base shape that has some element of the final shape you want, like in this case it has the side profile:




Then create an angled cutting plane using one of the methods described above, in this case I used a combination of Draw solid > Plane > 3pt to make an angled plane to start with, just snapping it on to the top edge of the solid rather than using a construction line to make something close to the desired angle, then adjusted it slightly by rotating it using the edit frame rotation grip in the top and front views to tweak it slightly, and scaled it a little bit using the edit frame too. So once you have it at your desired angle like this:



Then you mirror the cutting plane, then select the base piece and run Construct > Boolean > Difference and use the planes as the cutting objects. That will slice the base object up into pieces like this:



Then delete the unwanted pieces to leave this part:



- Michael