Hi Steve S, many thanks for that suggestion.

I will give it a try.

I'm still a novice user just finding my way around.


John

With semi-organic shapes like airplanes (or ship hulls, my main nemesis), NURBS can be quite a challenge as continuity and fluidity of shapes is hard to maintain. If possible, I'd try to stick to one continuous shape nose to tail and then edit out the cockpit area, rebuilding the nose and engine cowl to its proper shape thereafter, as per the example below.



Jean-Paul Binot

Hello Jean-Paul !

Many thanks for your comments - I agree totally with your logic.

The problem that I am finding (when trying to model older aircraft) is that it is not always obvious what the overall shape of the fuselage should look like before modification.


John

Hi Steve,

How would you go about smoothing the front and rear sections of your design at the intersecton and the mirrored surface that would make the opposite side of the fuselage?

Cheers

Ramon.

Hi, Ramon. Since the cross-section curves where the front and back meet are exact copies of each other, they should match perfectly. Just be sure that when you cut out the cockpit area, the cutout extends below where the two surfaces start to diverge from each other (the hilighted yellow point in the pic below.)

As for the mirrored sides, make sure that the control points at the top and bottom stick straight out from the ends of the curve. This will ensure that the curve ends at the proper angle to form a smooth transition.





Steve S

JPBWEB wrote: "If possible, I'd try to stick to one continuous shape nose to tail..."

I'd have to disagree. With my method, both the cross-sections and the side profiles of the nose are accurately drawn. With your method, neither set of curves is drawn accurately. Everything is an approximation. Just my $0.02.

Steve S