After forking a ton of cash about 4 years I have just started learning surfacing in Solidworks. When someone like me with the artistic talent of a bag of spanners can do this in about hour I thought wow.....or am I just kidding myself?

Alan

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SW practice [/img]

Cool !

Now you simply make the real thing out of GRP and Kevlar

In two hours

Oh I've done enough mould making and GRP work to know it will be more like 4 hours...

thats pretty good, what i have noticed with solidworks is, some people find it intuitive and easy to pick up and learn quickly, others really really struggle and just dont understand it. looks like you learnt it nice and quickly, its a good skill to have...

also the shape of your car reminded me of...

Once you've made the mould then you need to decide what engine you are going to fit. Looks like a good candidate for a mid-engine setup

more practice windscreen is casting a shadow on the body

Thanks guys...quite encouraging.

The thing to clarify is that I'm pretty well versed in SW....been using it on and off for about 7 years, however it's the surfacing part of it that is a mystery to many, especially those who have no need for it. 99% of my job and many others involve straight lines, circles, angles etc with little need for compound curves etc. that is more the realm of industrial designers.

I actually picked up a lot from cadjunkie.com, the guy who runs the site has great tutorial videos showing the design of spoons, coffee pots etc very much artistic products rather than engineered ones. Another good site is Solidsmack.com

Hi Alan,

Try getting hold of Rhinoceros 3d for surfacing. It's what most of the local car design houses use for initial shaping, before porting across to Catia for final tooling.

Available on a free download for trial. Best bit is, it recognises Autocad keyboard shortcuts. Some good tutorials on the site, and interweb generally. I use an old version that still does all I need of it.

Cost is a small percentage of SW, if you want to buy it.

Cheers,
Nev.

[Edited on 15/9/11 by Neville Jones]

I've been realising the power of surfacing in NX this week. Being a mechanical engineer its a bit odd getting my head around modelling without true dimensions, but you can't deny how useful it can be in other design processes.

I find it difficult to see how any other CAD setup can better the Siemens system now and i'm finding it to be by far the most functional as a package (although its the only one that I've had full industrial training on).