Analysis of my mistake? Rail cannot be tangent to profiles
@Corvin.Huber wrote:
I mean a life-size, real replica. As one can see from my website, I have built an aircraft before (MONI), so I am aware of the effort it involves ... 😊
Ha, I went back and I did indeed skip over that one sentence 😉
@Frans.Hessels is doing something similar in recreating the Pander D. His CAD work on the model is all done in Fusion 360.
@Corvin.Huber wrote:
Some of the elements (for instance the elliptical wings) are quite complex surfaces, lofted over changing profiles with changing angles of incidence. This works (quite nicely) as long as I am only looking at surfaces. When I want to thicken these surfaces into objects (such as transforming a thin surface into a 0.6 or 1.0mm carbon fiber skin, fusion 360 messes up. Sometimes the thickening is not permitted at all or when you make cross sections at new stations you find out that the thickness is different from the originally specified thickness. Sometimes the thickening also creates self-intersections.
By studying the internet, I seem to get the vibe that complex 3-D curvatures are not a Fusion 360' strong point.
First, I would not worry too much about what people say about Fusion 360 on the Internet. Many people who run into problems go to the internet to see what others say, read negative comments, and then repeat statements. What they very rarely do is to dive deeper and analyze the problem. Often, they will find that the limitations are their understanding of how CAD kernels and surface modeling work under the hood.
Have you used the Curvature Comb, Curvature map and Isocurve Analysis tools on the edges and surfaces you have created?
Problems with thickening, shelling, and offsetting surfaces are almost always due to bad curvature.
Would you know what to look for when seeing the results they report?
If the answer to that is not a firm YES, then for the moment, you don't need another CAD software. These tools provide essential feedback to analyze what the problem is, and their feedback drives the actions to fix those problems.
Surface modeling requires absolutely clean curves. Single-span 3-degree or 5-degree control point splines. Do you know what that means? The Autodesk Alias Theory Builders provide an excellent foundation for surface modeling.
All that is not to say that Fuiosn 360 does not have limitations; it does. However, in many cases, the limitations are the user's skills, not the software.
