Hi Michael, thanks for the comments.
I just downloaded the demo version of MoI which I probably should have done before my original post.
One advantage we have on this project is that we don't need to exactly reverse engineer the original design. We just need to capture it's essence. My mesh model I created is not exactly like the original prototype, and the prototype isn't exactly like the artist's 3 view (not to mention the artist's top, side and front dimensions don't exactly all match up either.) So there is some flexibility in the final result.
This is an RC scale aircraft (7-8 foot wing span) so the only major constraint is that we need the *exact* airfoil contour where the wings plug in. I have this contour as a series of X, Y data points. Is there a way to import a set of X, Y points into MoI and build a curve that passes through those points smoothly and exactly? There's about 60 data pairs, so it would be pretty tedious to plunk these in manually.
In my own little program that generated the mesh model of our design I just loaded in the X, Y points and built a cubic spline out of them. Can I create a curve in MoI from some external set of coordinates?
After playing with MoI for 10 minutes, I think that if I could import the exact airfoil contour somehow ... then I could mess around with the other curves and build the rest of the shape by dragging the control points around interactively. Once I had the airfoil locked in, I could probably spend 10 minutes on all the other parts and be awfully close to final result.
Is it possible to import a set of curve coordinates from some external data file?
Thanks,
Curt.
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