As you can see I am a beginner. Please bear with me. I'm also 78, retired jet and Helicopter pilot so I'm not dump just a little stupid.

I've been trying to model a canopy. I've been using the sweep command. Maybe wrong approach.

Now, this is what I have:
Canopy picture

My MOI3d modeling file


If you can help I would appreciate it!

Marv

Hi Marv, yeah that's a pretty advanced type of shape. Probably the biggest problem with your current approach is trying to model it in a "patch by patch" type approach. It will probably be less awkward to build some of the shapes if you build some pieces as extended surfaces that are then cut off where they intersect, rather than trying to directly construct surfaces that try to follow those final boundaries directly...

See here for an example:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4824.10

Right now the sweep is getting all bunched up because it's getting too much pressure on it by having it try to turn in a small area.

If you try to make something follow a curved path and the offset from the path is larger than the radius of the bend you'll get bunching like this:




That's why your sweep looks sort of weird and squiggly because in the lower area it's getting this same kind of bunching where it is crossing back over top of itself.

- Michael

Maybe a sweep like that will be more suitable ;)



And be carreful : in face view on your figure curves are not exactly symmetric!
Edit / Show Points and you will see that points are not strictly horizontal!

You can of course take 3 Profils! ;)

Hello Marv,

I had a little time to use your curves as guides and here is what I came up with. It's not perfect, the Blends are not exactly right, but I was intent on staying in MoI for all operations except the render. Typically you'll need some other modeling tools in order to make surfacing for things like planes easier for you, but I'm confident those sort of advanced surfacing tools will eventually make it into MoI. If you'd like to see a tutorial I can see what I can do.

Hi Ostexo,

Nice model! I would like to see the general steps you made to make it.
I'm guessing Marv would also!

Marc

Hi,
Why don't you use Network ?
I've tested with a little example in attachment

you can also use Loft to design the general model and Boolean >Diff to cut the cockpit

PS : sorry for my poor design , i'm haven't time to do the same as you request.... :)

Hello,

Video is up showing one way to model the fuselage. It's not entirely complete but I didn't want to run the video much past 30 minutes. Hope it helps explain the concepts at very least.

https://vimeo.com/145704021

Really instructive.
Thanks for this video OsTexo.

application of your tutorial >

WOW!! Yes indeed

Such help I never expected

Great tutorial. Learned some things I didn't know-- esp the 'history' for lines with blend! Thanks for sharing.

Would you mind sharing what software you used to do the rendering

Hello,

Thanks, I'm glad it was helpful. As far as the rendering software goes, I use Thea Render with the TR Rhino plugin. In my opinion it is one of the best rendering packages out there and it is really helpful to have the ability to modify the NURBs surfaces and see the render update in real time. I'll make a short video showing this.

Wow! That's a very thorough tutorial!
Thanks for taking the time.

I usually work with solids and delete the faces were I want blends.
Your method is quite nice.

On my machine history appears to be on by default.
Blend is such an amazing tool.

Marc