Egilman

I think that given our backgrounds and experiences over decades have driven this more than anything else... we are constantly re-thinking things in pursuit of scale accuracy and how to get there.... Sometimes to our own hindrance.... {chuckle}

Richard, I have access to Rhino, You make it I will come.... I've yet to find a decent tut on it yet though and if you write one it will be the first.... And yes, Marine modeling/design has been using Rhino and a version of Dassault's proprietary system for decades to model ship hulls... They are the go to's of the ship design world.... What Autocad is to engineering and structures, Rhino is to Marine Design... Many people could use it most don't have the resources to pay for it... So yes, a heartfelt and sincere statement, you build it, (rhino tutorial) I will come... Right now SW from Dassault just plain works for solid modeling it's reliable and simple to learn, Fusion 360 has issues IMHO..... Good for simple stuff a bear when you get into anything larger or compound curvy... Very capable but a mountain to climb and not reliable in it's operations... works in some cases not in others and the unbelievable part is it does this on the Same Geometry one day to the next... Seems like it works when it wants to.... The direct comparison to SW shows that it is overly complicated for what it does, which I have seen all too often when the basis of the software is a cad background.... (all Inventor/Fusion products stem from Autocad as it's original base point) What I'm going to do is get the process down and repeatable for the basic hull shape solid, then let it go there... Since I've gotten this far, and the process does work, might as well as document it for what it's worth... But I'm not going to put a lot more energy into it... McNeel, Dassault and Autodesk have been competing for several decades now and each have developed their own little playground, Rhino is best at Marine Applications, Dassault is best at Aeronautical Applications, (and is pushing hard into general design) and Autodesk is trying to push into those areas but is best at BIM and mechanical/structural design....... They are all capable of doing what the others do, but each is best in the area they were originally designed to perform... It's been 30 years and that still hasn't changed....

Thanks Kevin, It was a ten hour marathon to get it to that point, lots of research, lots of trial and error... Right now, it won't shell, in any way I've found to try and that is the next step.... It's not ready for prime time yet... There are some errors in the time line way back at the first lofts that needs to be corrected.... So I'm going to take another shot at creating it with the experience gained, Hopefully, I'll get it back to the solid state and be able to shell it, or figure out why not.... Not completely sure of how I got to this point yet... The path of discovery continues... Not going to say I'm the first to do it this way, but I'll tell you what, there are no mentions of modeling an existing hull, (as opposed to simple building a generic hull) this way in F360 I've been able to find on the net nor in AD's forums.... Their tut's are all just an example of what they think "Could" be done.... Every one actually modeling hulls in F360 are going down the cad route rather than the much faster solid modeling route... The one thing I am going to do is comment on the non-helpful warnings they offer when F360 thinks you did something wrong... It's gets very old very quickly when all they tell you is to re-draw your sketch or re-model your model for every single issue... Cryptic does not build confidence in the product..... {chuckle} The feel of it is like your using cad to build your model or at least they have taken a cad approach to the tools they offer solid modeling... And if the input isn't perfect, it either automatically rejects it or will fail without explanation... I've also had it bail out and crash on me four different times... Seriously reminds me of the early blender days... Anyway I'm taking a break for the day, and will hit it again tomorrow... will keep everyone posted....

Simple solution? When you design your cannon, drill out the barrel, AND the touch off hole, making sure they intersect like on the real thing.... (create a vent for the bore of the gun, just like in real life) And then of course raise it off the build plate and angle it a bit as well....

Been playing with it, I've gotten it to the point of being a solid body.... The whole thing..... One piece, that's where we want to be.... Onwards.... (although I might take a bit of a break, this last trip was kinda rough figuring out how to get this done)

Yes Kevin, it makes perfect sense... It's exactly how I lofted the hull side above except the bottom of the surface is the projected chine line.... What you need to do for it to work is make each of the side and top profiles one single solid spline... Then the end lines being one single solid spline as well... AND! turn on 3D sketch... So you can attach the ends with coincident relationships.... I still have to tweak the sketches a bit cause I made an error, I accidently put the stern spline on the same sketch as the chine line... It worked, but it's not the way it's supposed to be done... Where SW only uses two sketches to project the line, F360 uses three... (the projected line has to go on it's own sketch) I'm going to correct my error, then attempt the hull bottom panel loft.... After that it should be pretty straight forward... I'll post a detailed step by step when I get it finally sussed out....

And here is the first lofted surface, the upper hull side....

Thanks Kevin, that will create a fairly generic hull, how does it work for a modeled hull of a specific boat/ship...... I've sussed out the projected curve.... The purple line represents the projected curve....

Cool! are we going to see pics? I'm sure it would be perfect...

From some of what I read on that thread, lofting is still something they are working on trying to expand, right now it is hit or miss on it's usefulness... Like I said it can be done, but is the time it takes really worth it? I'll give it another shot.... and see what I can suss out....

Hi Kevin, I'm going to give it another try... I've found a couple of tuts on it online, (youtube tuts, Yech!) but any way there are two ways of doing it, I almost sussed out one of them before I got frustrated with it... At that point it was time to step back and reconsider what I was doing... That hull should be buildable in F360... But it is a darn shame it isn't able to use multi-part profiles to project curves.... It would be much much more flexible that way.... Gimme a day or two and I'll take another crack at it.... I hate dealing with vertices....

Well, I figured that I would take my rudimentary knowledge of F360 and try to build the hull the same as I did in SW..... I spent four and a half hours trying to project the first two curves.... No go... F360 does not have the ability to project two profiles lines into a projected line in 3D space... Well not exactly, it can project two splines into 3D space, as long as they are contiguous, one-piece splines....... if your profile is made of of more than one piece like two splines or a line and a spline, it will not do it... I've searched the autodesk forums for a solution or workaround for this and see a lot of people asking for this functionality to be added to it... It's probably my lack of knowledge and experience, but I'm dead in the water as far as creating the hull in Fusion 360.... I can't even get to the first hull side loft.... which only took about 5 minutes for me in SW just plugging along..... I'll continue the series in SW as it seems that I understand it's tools better... Modeling in 3D shouldn't be that frustrating....

Anyone out there taking a shot at trying this in F360?

Use the kit's paper parts to build a form and make your own..... Copy it several times and then you can have it anyway you want it....

There is something very satisfying about building and using something you made yourself... Especially doing it the old time honored way... It's a accomplishment, something they don't teach but in very few places anymore... Well done...

Ok Brothers, Final installment.... Opening up the poopdeck and building the beavertail... Create a sketch on the side plane... Flip the model around so your looking at it from the back side... Zoom in on the stern.... Draw three lines as seen in the image below, making sure that the forward line is coincident with the deck, and the aft line clears the transom and is lower than the deck.... Draw another line from the intersection of the deck and the inner transom wall up and to the left as seen below.. Select the deck line and the angled line and apply a collinear relationship, the angled line will snap to the same angle as the deck... Then trim the overhanging lines... Click OK.... Draw a line connecting the angled line to the forward vertical line this creates a closed profile that we will use to cut away the transom... Close the sketch.... Select the profile you just created and Go to: Insert > Cut select Extrude, Change to Top view and turn on your deck drawing..... In the dialog box, direction 1 section, click on the Reverse Direction button, (two angled arrows) to make sure that the cut arrowhead is directed towards the hull side.... Grab the arrow head and move it to the line as shown in the images below... Click OK.... This part of the transom needed to be cleared away because the ladders from the beavertail and a portion of the superstructure would need to take it's place... Now we create the Beavertail.... Turn off the deck image, Turn on the side image, Create a sketch on the side plane... Flip the model around so your looking at it from the back side... Zoom in on the stern.... Turn off hull visibility of the last extrude that created the main deck... Draw the four straight lines as seen below.... Connect the upper and lower line with a spline closing in the profile, then give the upper connection a tangent relationship. Close the sketch, (and remember to rename) Go to: Insert > Boss/Base select Extrude, Turn on your deck image and switch to the top plane... Pull the arrow to match outside line of the beavertail on the drawing... Zoom in to get it right, the line is a tad bit farther out than the hull side.... Select merge result and Click Ok... This is what you wind up with, Perfect! Turn off the deck drawing and turn on the bottom drawing... Rotate the model to the bottom view.... (the grey area is your hull half) Create four straight lines as in the image below..... Draw two separate splines as in the image below, (don't draw them continuous, draw one, exit the tool, and then draw the second, you don't want them linked together.... Now, select the top spline move the right handle up and then give it a horizontal relationship.... Then select the left side spline, the lower handle giving it a vertical relationship... Close the sketch.... Go to: Insert > Cut select Extrude, pull the extrude up past the top of the beavertail, as in the picture below... Click OK We now have the basic shape of the beavertail in place, we just need to smooth it out.... For this we use fillets & chamfers.... Go to: Insert > Features select Fillet/Round, Click on the blue edge as shown in the picture Change the Radius into 1000 mm... Click OK.... Go to: Insert > Features select Chamfer, In the dialog box select the Distance/Angle option change the dimension to 50mm, make sure tangent propagation is turned on in the dialog box and select the bottom edges of the beavertail... Click OK.... Go to: Insert > Features select Chamfer, In the dialog box select the Distance/Distance option, In the parameters section Select Asymmetric, Turn off tangent propagation, put 300mm in the first dimension and 150mm in the second... Click on the blue edge as shown in the picture Click OK... Go to: Insert > Features select Fillet/Round, change the dimension to 100mm, make sure tangent propagation is turned on in the dialog box, select the five edges as shown in the picture... Click OK.... Go to: Insert > Features select Fillet/Round, Rotate and zoom to the leading edge of the beaver tail, change the dimension to 30mm, make sure tangent propagation is turned on in the dialog box, select the edge as shown in the picture... Click OK... Rotate around to get a good look at the lower transom, select Fillet/Round, change the dimension to 100mm, make sure tangent propagation is turned on in the dialog box, select the two lower transom edges as shown in the picture... Click OK.... Hit enter to restart the fillet command using the same settings as before click on the Hull chine edge.... Click OK.... We are done building a Hull Half..... Yay Team!!!! Now we mirror it over the centerline and stitch it together into a single solid..... Go to Insert > Pattern / Mirror > Mirror, select the side plane in the Feature Tree as the mirror face, Select the Bodies to Mirror option, Click anywhere on the hull half to select it as shown in the picture.... It shows you an outline of the mirrored body, Select the Merge solids option, Select the Knit surfaces option, Select the Propagate visual properties option to mirror any colors as well... Click OK, (it takes a second or two depending on how complicated the body is) That's it folks, She might not be as exacting as if she was done in cad, but for a 3D printable scale model? Looks pretty good to me... A fairly decent representation of a Sunseeker Predator 108 hull solidbody in Solidworks.... What do you all think?

Hi all, second to last installment... Creating the upper hull Bulwarks and main deck... Go to Insert > Features select Shell, In the dialog box, Change the distance into 120 mm... In the blue box select the two surfaces in the image below... Click OK A warning box may appear warning about minimum thickness radius may result in problems, Click OK for the thickness warning... The solid body is now a shell at 120mm thickness... Create a sketch on the side plane... Flip the model around so your looking at it from the back side... Turn on your side drawing... Draw a line from one end to the other past the ends of the hull matching the main deck line on the hull.... Stern... Bow... Turn off the drawing... Go to Tools > Sketch Tools select Offset Entities, In the dialog box change the Offset Distance into 50 mm, Select the five outer edges of the hull, the offset will be previewed (yellow)... Make sure that the offset is directed inwards... If not, click on the Reverse button in the dialog box to change the direction of the Offset. Click OK... Go to: Tools > Sketch Tools, select Trim, In the dialog box select the Power Trim option and zoom in at the stern... Click and drag the cursor over the over hanging line ends to remove them.... Repeat the process at the bow and select ok.... Select the blue deck line and apply a fixed constraint to it... The color of the line changed from blue into black which means that the line is fully defined... Click OK and close the sketch... We are now going to fill the remainder of the hull below the main deck leaving the upper hull bullworks... In the feature tree on the left side of the screen select the sketch you just created... Go to: Insert > Boss/Base select Extrude, In the dialog box, change the Blind direction to "Up to Next"... (make sure merge results is checked) You will see a preview... Click OK... You now have bullworks and a main deck.... Next up... Final steps, cutting away the stern transom to open the poopdeck and creating the beavertail, fileting the hard edges and mirroring & merging the half hull to make a complete hull....

Welcome to shore leave my friend, and we will try to stay on topic, does a side trip down history lane count? We have been known to wander a bit discussing the object being modeled... {chuckle} but we do honor all requests to stay on topic, (most of the time) just a bunch of good ol' boys, meanin' no harm..... I'll be pullin' up an easy chair for this one... EG

Ok, three more sections to post, lotsa pics I hope it works... Blocking in and shaping the stern... We start with a sketch on the side plane.... Turn off visibility for both lofts and turn on for both the upper hull curve and the Keel profile.... We are going to draw a straight line matching the diagonal line from the top curve to the keel curve.... Now we reverse the visibility changes we made earlier.... We move the ends of the line coincident with the upper and lower edges of the hull surfaces, that check the line that it is still in position by turning off the upper loft... You can plainly see that the line position changed at the bottom, so we correct this and turn the loft back on and close the sketch, (don't forget to rename it) Now we trim the tail of the hull off, go to Insert > Surface and select Trim... A dialog box opens and you set the trim type as standard, in the Trim Tool Box select the line you just drew... Set the Remove selections option button... Select the two surfaces on the right side of the cut line (they will turn purple).... Set the Surface Split Options to Linear..... Click OK... We start a new sketch on the side plane and draw two centerlines... (construction lines) Select the upper centerline, control select the upper edge of the loft and give it a tangent constraint, then, do the same for the bottom centerline.... Now draw a diagonal line from one centerline to the other as in the image below.... Close the sketch and rename it... We are now going to loft the upper part of the stern.... Go to Insert > Surface select Loft.... Click in the Profiles box and select the stern edge of the upper hull loft and the last sketch you drew.... Make sure the green balls are on the same end of the loft and your preview will show... In the start constraints drop down menu, set the start constraing to Tangency To Face, and, Change the Tangent Length to 1.3... In the end constraints select Normal to Profile, and Change the Tangent Length to 2... Click OK You now have the starting makings of a transom.... Start a sketch on the side plane.... Draw two lines... Close and rename the sketch.... Go to: Insert > Surface select Extrude, Change the distance into 5000 mm Make sure that the extrusion is directed as shown in the picture. If the direction is wrong, change it with the Reverse Direction button Click OK Go to: Insert > Surface select Trim, Click in the Trim tool box, Select the Surface-Extrude you just created, Select the “Remove selections” option, Select the three purple surfaces as shown in the picture, Select Surface Split Option Linear.... Click OK... Go to Insert > Surface, select Knit, click in the selections box and select the Upper and Lower hull faces along with the Upper Transom surfaces, (they will turn blue) Select the ‘’Gap Control’’ option... Click OK IMPORTANT NOTE: It is absolutely crucial that the color of the knitted edges changes from blue into black after the Knit feature is applied. If the edge of the Knitted surface stay’s blue it means there’s a (small) gap between some surface transitions. Make sure that the color of the Knitted edges always changes from blue into black when you’ve applied the Knit feature. Otherwise it will cause problems later on when you want to convert the surface body into a true solid body. They have turned black, this means that the upper and lower hull surfaces and upper transom have become one complete surface.... Go to: Insert > Surface Select Trim, Click in the Trim tool box, Select the Hull surface as the Trim tool, Select the “Remove selections” option, Select the surface extruded cut tool you used previously as shown in the picture.... Select Surface Split Option Linear Click OK... We have just closed in the bottom transom... Create a new sketch on the side plane.... Turn off the Bow Plane and draw a line from the vertex on the bow to the vertex point on the upper transom.... Close and rename the sketch.... Go to: Insert > Surface select Fill then Select the two upper hull edges and the line you created.... You will see the preview of the fill operation... Click OK You have a temporary upper hull surface.... (almost a complete shell) Go to Insert > Surface, select Knit, click in the selections box and select the hull face along with the lower transom surfaces and the temporary top surface, (they will turn blue) Select the ‘’Gap Control’’ option... Click OK All the lines are black, meaning it is one contiguous surface shell... We are about to make a solid... Turn off all planes and drawings, then, spin the hull around to see the backside.... Go to: Insert > Surface select Fill, Select all the edges on the centerline... (you get a preview) In the options section, select Fix up boundary, Merge results and Create solid options..... (this will solidify your model) Click OK It is now one solid block... For confirmation we select the section view feature .... That's it for this post, next post, I will be creating the hull bulwarks and the main deck surface..... We are getting closer..... EG (sorry for the long post)

As I remember, the lower wing center section was always problematic on that kit.... (and the joint from wing section to the assembled center section) It stands up very well and is a very nice kit still today, but it does take some patience to build properly.... You've got this one brother...

Hi HG, I'll admit it was an idea I toyed with, but decided not to, besides I would do it as a static model... She would be a fast runner for sure, capable of 40 kts in real life, depending on which engines and drives she has.... a person could build her to run at any speed and she would look good... I'm just using the hull to show the process of modeling one in a solid modeling program... Overall, I have about an hour and a half into modeling her and that is with correcting my shortcut... And I'm a relative newbie.... Anyway when I get the rest of it up we can see what people think of her and my weak attempt to model her... {chuckle}

Not quite, I have to finish the build of the hull, solidify it add the transom and beavertail, mirror and stitch it together.... Although this would be buildable as a hull it is far from a complete model, but it can be used to show the possibilities of what SW & F360 are capable of... I'll be posting the rest of this experiment later this evening...

An issue tank, just out of the factory with fresh unit markings.... Excellent! (although I would have gone with a little less rust and a little more steel on the tracks) You got them down to a science brother....

Ok I did the work on it tweaking the corner.... Much cleaner now.... Besides, it's all going to be moot, building the beavertail I'm going to have to cut all of that stern edge away.... Live and learn I suppose....

Tools were just tools paint them like tools... They usually came out of the factory in one color, camo was painted in the field, either a supply depot or most usually by the unit using it... And they would strip off the removable items before painting, except for winter when they just whitewashed everything...