Many thanks to Micheal, Ed and Barry for the guidance with the guitar contouring - learned a lot! Not to mention the hours of trial and error and headaches I was saved. :)

Here are the results - Michael's help with the solids, edges and curves. Barry's method for arm contour. Ed's method for belly contour and filleting.

Although there is more work to do - here is a shot of the neck and body designed here with expert forum help. This has been a real amazing learning experience - thanks very much for sharing your knowledge. Now that the program is getting more familiar - want to try some more creative ideas. Like a neck/body scarf joint like the old Valley Arts guitars had - and their Korean counterparts.

That's some great progress in a pretty short time so far Neil!

Yes definitely things will continue to get easier as you gain more and more familiarity.

- Michael

Looks great Neil. Be sure to post a photo of the completed guitar.

Ed Ferguson

Thanks Ed! you can count on that. Finding that milling a neck is tricky - went through some mdf last night getting settings right with the machine and CAM programming as well.

Thanks to the expert help in this forum - here is the first attempt at milling a neck modeled in MoI3D. :) The transitions came out great - after milling it took about 20 minutes to cut out on the band saw and sand with the random orbital with 180 grit, then rubbed on a little boiled linseed oil to get to the state in the photos. Of course more work is needed - but a far cry less than making it from scratch by hand. This is what this endeavor is all about - getting much needed assistance at the shop. Today is a fun day. Next project will be getting the headstock tuning key holes and cutaway so the work can be flipped over and so milled on both sides.

Video link of short clips of the milling of the neck profile: https://youtu.be/wTbd2urCXBM

AMAZING!!!!!

My huge congratulation.

Very, very good job.

BRAVO!!!!

Hi Neil,
great to see your efforts with Moi have reaped results.
Cheers
Barry

Unreal to reality! Excellent!

Fantastic neck Neil!

Marc

Looks great!

Always fun to see a MoI 3D model translated into a physical object whether it be in wood, metal, foam, or 3D printed plastic.

Ed Ferguson

A couple low res renderings of the body and neck made with MoI3D - looking forward to more challenging endeavors after building this guitar. The body is a tad too thick and a few other things that need to be redesigned for production - but all in all pretty good thanks to the generous sharing of information here.

Hmmm...honestly, not so good those renderings...

They fail to do justice to the very nice and very well done original product!

Bad material setup.

Obviously don't know much about rendering - sorry for the poor quality here are the pictures in MoI.

Very good modelling!!

And about renderings...no one is born knowing everything :)
A very good knowledge of the rendering' principles takes months to be learned...and a lot, lot of practicing :)

Thank you for all the input and suggestions Marco! Well noted.

This is so awesome, being able to build the entire guitar as it was modeled in MOI! Seeing this I'm starting to think that NURBS modelling is actually the better paradigm (even for semi-organic shapes), if one can "escape" the polygonal mindset.

a few improved renders - using SimLab free edition.

Hello!

A pretty simple material setup, but very nice render this time :)

Thanks Marco, Yes - still not great - but better - have a lot to learn :)