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Choosing Design Software |
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Every Speedster strives for "THE LOOK"....that simple, classic, fast, sleek, always in motion, vintage, stance. |
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Most Speedsters are not Designed, they are Shaped during construction. OK if you are Artistic and have a good eye. I'm not Artistic. I don't have the Eye. And I chose to build my speedster body with wooden strips. The strips confine the shape. Where their parallel lines run has a lot to do with "the Look". I needed the computer to get simplicity... to get the Look. |
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I chose Rhino as the design software. The decision was not easy. I knew the the speedster body was basically an upside down boat. The shape was freeform... Too complex for many CAD packages. I looked at Marine design software. -- AeroHydro, Surface Works, and Prolines. |
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I tried engineering software : AutoCad, ProEngineer, and CATIA. I tried Alias/Wavefront-Maya which Hollywood uses for animations and special effects. All this software could do the job. I used the current release Oct 1, 2002 except for AutoCad where I used AutoCad-2000 The big differences are Ease of learning & Use, Curve Analysis and control, Rendering, and ability to generate CNC code natively to cut the stations for the form on a CNC router vs exporting to other software like MasterCam (MC).... sometimes through CAD software like Rhino/ProEngineer/AutoCad -- Rhino has an interlink directly to MasterCam(MC). |
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It boiled down to 3 leading packages with different
strengths : I liked Rhino. The Rhino Marine Design Tutorial was very good. Looking back, I think Rhino was definitely the right choice.I spent weeks making this choice.
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