Hi Rogurt,
I first tried Network to create the engines and the wings. The results were not good, leaving some artifacts on the wing tips, for instance... so, as far as I can remember, I relied heavily on the 2-rail sweep, with scaling rail, which worked like a charm! So:
Fuselage: 2-Rail sweep, followed by Blend to close the holes in the tail and in the nose tip;
Engines: also 2-rail at first for the general shape, later added boolean difference / trim with some helper objects to get the shape right at both the intake and the exhaust;
Wings and horizontal stabilizers: 2-Rail sweep, with two separate faces at first (top and bottom), later closed by Planar in the inner end, and by Blend at the tips, to give them a round surface;
Vertical stabilizer: this was a tricky one. First tried one single 2-Rail, but later made a couple 2-rails (top and bottom), joined somewhere at the center with Blend. That was the best way to get the most accurate shape.
Canopy: this is were I stood for the Network, (But a 'polar' network instead of a 'grid' one) to create the base shape. The 'equator' lines where created by trimming the fuselage with a helper line, drawn on a side view.
As for the control surfaces, they were simply 'cut' from the main parts, with boolean-difference with trim lines (making sure the main parts were already 'Solids' before boolean). Then, a tittle Move and Scale to create a little gap between them... the only reason I did it whis way was because of...
...Fillets... well, I have to admit that while MoI is awsome, fillets remain THE sole weakness of the program, IMHO. There are not that many fillets in the model, but the ones I did, were not easy: For instance, first attempt on the engines was with a network... the surface seemed 'tense' at both ends, and the cropped intake would not fillet. That's when I tried the Sweep; the surface seemed more regular then, and I had no trouble filleting afterwards. Of course, it problably was just ME: I'm NOT what you would call a 'MoI expert'... ;)
Hope this helps,
Cheers,
Joao
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