Third day of tinkering with Rhino 3D and the Rockwell Stealth has seen some major improvement to the forward fuselage outer mold lines. Still not perfect, but for the moment good enough. This is now a fully-solid model… so it’s on to making the details.
A photograph taken in the 1960’s showing a Vought ADAM (Air Deflection and Modulation) VTOL fighter concept display model. ADAM used engines in the wings with thrust deflection to achieve VTOL performance.
Scan made from a slide. No further information on this particular design concept.
Further progress on the stealthy aircraft being modelled in Rhino. The forward fuselage is packed with complex curves, and there’ve clearly been some issues in modeling them… still, it’s looking like what it’s supposed to.
As the Space Park effort showed, I’m reasonably good at modeling in CAD. However the CAD program I use has some serious limitations as far as the sort of shapes it can model as solid objects…. anything with organic contours is pretty much right out. But Rhino 3D is advertised as being the solution to that. So some while back I bought a copy and promptly ignored it. However, I’ve fired it up, and here’s the first project: an early 1970’s North American Rockwell stealthy ground attack plane. This is just a first stab at a model and is pretty wrong in some ways; much left to do. Still, at the very least it didn’t explode, so that’s something.
Finally wrapped up the Space Park tonight. Numerous hours were spent in re-building a few things… one advantage that physical modeling has over virtual is that the part doesn’t suddenly start spitting error messages at you. Nevertheless, the problems were solved and the model completed. Shown here are the parts breakdown as well as the parts layout for stereolithography. Now to get quotes…
spaceparkparts2a.jpg spaceparkparts1a.jpg spaceparkpartssprue2aa.jpg spaceparkpartssprue2ba.jpg
Irritatingly, the blog software won’t make thumbnails of all of the images… too big, I guess. So click on the titles to see ’em.
Just about done with this CAD model. It’s given me eyestrain and a headache, but at least it ain’t carcinogenic…
Detailing of the “bridge” and on the main body…
Probably four or five hours works from what was shown the last time. The difference is subtle… detailing on the ring support arms. That’s it. As with physical modelling, computer modeling gives fast buildup from nothing to “hey, I know what that is,” but once details start getting added, the process grinds to an apparent halt. Oh, well… progress is progress.
A model I will be doing for Fantastic Plastic is the “space park” from BSG, in 1/9700 scale. The plan initially was to make this the old fashioned way. However, what I may end up doing is using this design as a first step into rapid prototyping. Instead of carving the thing out of polymerized poison and filling the air surrounding my head with abrasive and carcinogenic dust, I’m making a computer model of the thing, and will be sending the file to a number of rapid prototyping shops for quotes. Modelling the thing has so far gone pretty quickly… I made this since breakfast. But as with manual modelling, it’s the details that’ll drag the effort to a screeching halt. As well, it’s unknown as yet jsut how much the quote will be. Might wind up being prohibitively expensive. But if not… the BSG “Cylon Base Ship” and “Naboo Skiff” could possibly be the last small models that I make entirely by hand.
Work continues at a slow pace on the Cylon Base Ship model. Getting near done making the basic shapes, though… the long arm is done, the two smaller arms about halfway.
