Hi Yannada, generally car modeling is a highly complex task. You should be prepared to spend quite a lot of time working with different techniques and studying tutorials to make progress on that.

Some links to help you get started:

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1267.16
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=898.2
http://www.carbodydesign.com/tutorials/?id=1196

I think there was also some kind of book printed a few years ago about car modeling using Rhino, that may be worth checking out as well.

- Michael

Also, this is the same problem that kevjon runs into when hes faced with not being able to do his model with "NURBS".

The curves in your file when viewed with anything other than top view look like this



which in no way have anything to do with a bumper. So you'll be left with making that part up. The original ferrari plans had the curves there in their entirety, but took a long time to get them there, and therefore could create the surface you see on the car.

Reverse engineering a car from curves like this would be next to impossible, but you could get a good approxamation with Sub-D, it just wouldnt be true.

I'm not a car designer but same theories of Surface construction applies to products I design. look an iPhone for example, most people think is a brick with some fillets apply to it, for sure is not. surface curvature continuous modeling even applies to something as simple as the iPhone.
Anyhow I wish you had the time to wright some tutorials addressing topics like: G2 or G3 continuity, Tolerance settings etc.

As I said they are not the original and they need alot of work/corrections. (first you need to move views in place) Anyway is a free .eps from the net. to me is only good for some architectural drawing "Lol"

Also my two cents on Nurbs over Subds ( except if you can put your hands on Imagine and Shape from Catia)

>Also, this is the same problem that kevjon runs into when hes faced with not being able to do his model with "NURBS".

Complete nonsense.

Yanada
If you want to capture the look of that Ferrari get yourself a good polymodeller such as Modo.

Yannada, If you want to actually "make" the Ferrari, then go with Nurbs.

A sailing dinghy I am currently working on in MoI.

Brian

Nice boat modeling!

>>Yanada
If you want to capture the look of that Ferrari get yourself a good polymodeller such as Modo.

Well Modo is great Subd Modeler etc. but I'm interested making the real thing not some visuals...

>>Yannada, If you want to actually "make" the Ferrari, then go with Nurbs.

Ill leave that for pininfarina and others but I would love to see MoI involving to a great Class A Modeler.

Here is part of a Catia model inside MoI, Ill be running some tests on it when Scene browser ready. Ill be also running the same tests with StudioTools and NX ( I know it may not sound fair for MoI but the comparison will be focused only on tools that are currently supported by MoI).

Your having me on.

Your going to build a real Ferrari with MoI ?

You already have Catia and Studio Tools but you don't know how to model a Ferrari's bumper bar with MoI ?

There are quite a few jokesters on this forum.

Yes I could do it with Catia but not with MoI's current tool set. Now you can be my guest and prove me wrong. ( even if you get the shape you will probably lack of surface continuity, tangency, etc.)
I think will be crazy to ask MoI a $200 software to have tools like Catia or StudioTools, which they start @ $5000, Right?

Also try to read my post as it is and not jump to any conclusions. Just to clarify thinks I have used Catia and SolidWorks on previews jobs I never said I have Catia and Studio Tools, The Catia model is been provided and it will be used to run tests on StudioTools and NX which Ill be Beta testing on OSX.

Hi yannada, it is already pretty amazing that you can take your Catia data into MoI and that it looks so great!

I mean look at the quality of the display you're getting there just in MoI's current version.

I'd be interested if you could also show a screenshot of how that looks in Catia if you still have access to it right now.


But of course keep in mind that Catia is something like 100x the price of MoI and is not focused so much on being easy to learn and use like MoI is.

MoI is probably never going to have all the exact same functions as Catia, because of this different focus. As time goes on there will be some more and more various kinds of things that get added to MoI, but it is not too realistic to think that it will become a 100% complete replacement for Catia if you are using a lot of the advanced functions in there.

You can do a lot of interesting things with MoI in combination with Catia though even right now, like for instance you can run MoI on a netbook where there would be no hope of ever running Catia, do some simple designs really quickly and then be able to take your model data over to Catia for other stuff.

- Michael

Hi Kevin,

> There are quite a few jokesters on this forum.

I can understand that sub-d works better for your particular projects.

But you do realize that MoI is a NURBS modeler, and that this forum is about MoI, right?

So it tends to be filled with people for whom NURBS is a better choice for the particular tasks that they are doing, which happen to be different than your tasks.

That should not be a big mystery....

As you have surely noticed, I am quick to recommend sub-d over NURBS to someone if it fits their project better. That's just a practical thing, I mean I don't want someone to struggle to use MoI in a situation when another tool will work better for their project.

However, if you think that in all cases subd is superior to NURBS then I would have to say that you are very mistaken about that... Things that involve cutting holes through your shape tends to be a major disaster with subd, you can't guarantee that the shape of the hole is exact and instead you have to manipulate a big bunch of points to try and arrange them in the shape of the hole, and tweak the topology a lot to suit the hole. With NURBS you draw a profile curve (for example a circle of your exact hole diameter) and then cut your object with it and you're done. It's both faster and more accurate. The faster part is of interest to quite a variety of different people (including ones just doing rendering work), and the accurate part is of interest to people who are going to manufacture the part.

Manufactured parts tend to have a ton of these kinds of holes and fasteners in them, and when the part is actually built it is important for them to actually fit together and not to just look good in a rendering.

At any rate, if you hate NURBS so much then I'm not sure why you are hanging out on a NURBS forum?

I mean I don't necessarily blame you for not liking them, they are not the right tool for the work that you do and it can be very frustrating to attempt to use a tool for a job that it is not suited for. That does not mean that the same tool is not better for someone else who is working on a project that it is suited for though.

- Michael

>>>Hi yannada, it is already pretty amazing that you can take your Catia data into MoI and that it looks so great!
I mean look at the quality of the display you're getting there just in MoI's current version.
I'd be interested if you could also show a screenshot of how that looks in Catia if you still have access to it right now.

Is more than IMPRESSIVE you can brink heavy models like that into MoI. The first time I went a bit crazy I imported something Really Really Heavy. MoI just PUNCH through it
The display quality you know very well is the best of the best. Ill ask for Catia Screen shot just for fun...

>>>MoI is probably never going to have all the exact same functions as Catia, because of this different focus. As time goes on there will be some more and more various kinds of things that get added to MoI, but it is not too realistic to think that it will become a 100% complete replacement for Catia if you are using a lot of the advanced functions in there.

I Could not agree more. I'm just hoping the main focus for the next releases is on more advanced surfacing tools, basically what is there but more enhanced...and not rendering etc.

>>>You can do a lot of interesting things with MoI in combination with Catia though even right now, like for instance you can run MoI on a netbook where there would be no hope of ever running Catia, do some simple designs really quickly and then be able to take your model data over to Catia for other stuff.

Correct, MoI really fits the bill for conceptual work, as I said more enhancements on modeling tools and is gonna be great.

Hi Michael

>But you do realize that MoI is a NURBS modeler, and that this forum is about MoI, right?
Yep of course.

>As you have surely noticed, I am quick to recommend sub-d over NURBS to someone if it fits their project better.
>That's just a practical thing, I mean I don't want someone to struggle to use MoI in a situation when another tool will work better for their project.
I respect that

>However, if you think that in all cases subd is superior to NURBS then I would have to say that you are very mistaken about that
I've never said that. What I have said or inferred is that for some types of models (cars and aircraft) Sub'd and polygons is a better choice and would be quicker provided you wanted the model for visualization purposes only. If you want to manufacture a car (for example) then your best choice of nurbs modelling software would be a CAD package or even better a high end 3d parametric CAD package. It is possible that MoI would be suitable for some surfacing requirements if the 3D cad package didn't have the tools required for the job at hand but if that is the case you've probably purchased the wrong cad package to start with. I seriously thought Yannada was having me on by suggesting he was going to use MoI to manufacture a real Ferrari from that line drawing he posted. Wouldn't you? Even if you had blueprints from Ferrari you would need a licence from them to build one. Burr of course is the other jokester as he keeps saying he can model that with nurbs but is very careful not to say that he can model that in MoI, which is what the thread is about.

>At any rate, if you hate NURBS so much then I'm not sure why you are hanging out on a NURBS forum?
I don't hate nurbs I use them everyday in my work with Autocad (15 years) and Inventor (6 years). They a perfectly suited to mechanical work and quite like them actually. My interest in aviation art is a hobby only and yep nurbs has not proven suitable for that kind of work. The tools required to get all the subtle curvature of a aircraft are just not there in MoI. You end up with a very stilted model with lots of mesh cracks in it associated with the many surfaces required to create the shape. As to why I hang out on this forum - to see the latest developments in MoI that might prove useful to my work or hobby. I will occasionally make a post that will tell people that nurbs is not suitable for that project based on my experience which is something other people on this forum don't do because they either don't know, don't have the experience or they are fan boys of nurbs and refuse to accept there might be better and quicker alternatives for the project involved. It seems you and a few people on this forum have taken offence at that.

>I mean I don't necessarily blame you for not liking them, they are not the right tool for the work that
>you do and it can be very frustrating to attempt to use a tool for a job that it is not suited for.
>That does not mean that the same tool is not better for someone else who is working on a project that it is suited for though.
Absolutely Michael

Anyway good luck with MoI. I won't post here anymore as clearly from your post other points of view are not wanted on this forum.

Hi kevjon,

>>aviation art is a hobby only and yep nurbs has
not proven suitable for that kind of work.

Didn't you see the:

B17 - The Fortress that Refused to Fallin,
in the Moi gallery ?

Hi Kevin, I certainly don't mind you posting here, but I would like to avoid having threads spiral out of control into flame wars. That tends to suck up a lot of extra time.

I am sympathetic to your position, and I realize that you can also get attacked by zealous supporters of MoI as well. But like I mentioned this is the MoI forum after all so that is not going to be a particularly big surprise.


> I won't post here anymore as clearly from your post other
> points of view are not wanted on this forum.

I welcome other points of view, and we already covered plenty of ground where I agreed with you that MoI was not the right tool for your purpose. I'm not sure how many times you want that to be repeated before you are satisfied.

I mean it is not exactly my favorite thing in the world to spend all my time talking about what MoI does not do well and not mention the things that it does do well... Surely that should be pretty easy to understand.

I don't have any kind of "ban" on critical comments or other points of view, but when things start to repeat without much purpose or spiral out of control into flaming and name calling territory that is also just not my favorite thing to spend time on.

- Michael

>>>I seriously thought Yannada was having me on by suggesting he was going to use MoI to manufacture a real Ferrari from that line drawing he posted. Wouldn't you? Even if you had blueprints from Ferrari you would need a licence from them to build one. Burr of course is the other jokester as he keeps saying he can model that with nurbs but is very careful not to say that he can model that in MoI, which is what the thread is about.

You Make Me Laugh "LOL"

>>>Anyway good luck with MoI. I won't post here anymore as clearly from your post other points of view are not wanted on this forum.
~Kevin~

Kevin that's a bit childish, I think you should stick around and Keep given us your input, just have a laugh mate...

The current state of affairs with the dinghy if of interest.

Brian

Nice work, Brian ..

It looks like it would be fun to do.

eric