Modelling a Car Body

[d1camero]

Although most designers cringed at using SW for designing car bodies, I
would like to give it a try. It will make it easier to do CFD and
accurtely place attachement points for the chassis.



Given that, how should I approach this? draw a few sketch
profiles then loft? Then continually insert profiles and relofty
the surface?



thanks

d1

 

[d1camero]

Well I found a real cool tutorial on how to draw a mouse using
SW. I expect that the car will use manyof the same techniques.



http://www.productdesignforums.com/index.php?showtopic=230



I use SW mostly for engineering design of parts. I have never
used so much 3D work as with this tutorial. This takes it to a
whole new level.



d1

 

[Delinquent]

Be very interested to hear how you get on with that d1 - I'm just starting a car project myself in solidworks and had been told I'd need to do the body in something else, which I'd really rather not do as it would mean not only learning 2 bits of software, but also make it a right pain to ensure chassis members and mounts are in the correct place!

 

[d1camero]

Most designers seem to use Rhino 3D. One friend did a body in
this SW, but was difficult to import into SW and then use for
CFD. It was also near impossible to manipulate to fit parts of
the car created in SW.



I have read that most designers don't like SW because its

1) rendering is poor

2) its 3D is not as "intuitive" as other packages



Turns out though if you are not a professional body designer, it does a
pretty darn fine job. I do the rendering with the SW plugin
Photoworks.



d1

 

[Delinquent]

excellent, I have Rhino and did try a bit of swapping between one and the other and found it a mare, I'll have a go at the body a bit further down the line in SW. Do you have any images of your stuff you'd mind sharing?

 

[d1camero]

Not quite there yet. We are still working on the chassis.
Just doing the forementioned tutorials - body design is quite different
from the typical engineering design!



d1

 

[d1camero]

Here are some general tutorials on car body drawing:



http://www.carbodydesign.com/tutorials/car-drawing-sketchi ng-tutorials.php





d1

 

[Delinquent]

Sounds familiar, still working on the suspension amongst other things on mine - Having a barrel of laughs trying to design things around components I cant get measurements for yet so leaving large open gaps left right and center!


Cheers for the link, I'll have a work through.

 

[raghu_4414]

hi all to make a car design a perfect thing , i like to know more usage of surfaces , can u tell me how to learn surface modelling