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Got them back again. Here si the error message.

I was just going to say that... I guess hotmail just exists to piss people off. You can also just send them to my main e-mail adress. I don't like posting it in any visible place because it attracts spam like a magnet. I'm sending you a pm...

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

Sent.

The final version of the engine cowl + attachmet pylon is done. I'm having some rendering issues, but the model has been finalized. I will post a render about 3-4 hours from now even if the rendering software keeps messing up. (Will resort to a more primitive rendering package)

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

At last, it's done. I just *had* to tweak a few more things like the bulginess of the aft piece of the engine cowl/fuselage blend panel.

The cowl and support pylon are now finalized and therefore frozen. They're done. Anything else is an allowed target for criticism though. I've posted 2 renders. I've also decided to nuke the aft fuselage because I can't neatly weld together the old tailpiece to my new front and middle fuselage. Almost every bit of the old model has been trashed by now.

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/58720463/
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/58720505/

I doubt anyone has taken modeling an A-10 warthog this seriously before. If carried out by a 3-person commercial graphics team, this project would have made 'em go bankrupt by now.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

No criticism here.

Warning: I'm not sure I know what I'm talking about. What are the two parts (fixed and moving panel) of the vertical panel at the tail actually called by the way? For now I call them moving and fixed vertical panel.

The problem is the same as with the wings: I'm not really sure how the fixed and moving vertical panel are joined together. Rather than pull my hair out I'm just going to get it as good as I can. Okay I can't really do that to be honest. Could you get me a close-up of a hinge between the moving and fixed vertical panel and another close-up of the moving vertical panel's actuator rod and its housing on the outside of the fixed vertical panel?

Anyway, this is what I've made of them:


Side view:

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/59013282/

Shot along the meeting point between the fixed and moving vertical panel (straight down along it):

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/59013330/

If you see corners/edges that are noticibly too sharp or round just let me know. This tail fin is now just before the point of no return before the detailig process begins.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

The fixed vertical panel in the back is the vertical stabilizer.
The moving vertical panel in the back is the rudder.

They are not connected by one big hinge from top to bottom like you are probably expecting. There are 3 hinge points, and it's not a hinge like with teeth and a pin either, it's just one bolt on the top, the middle and the bottom

The second picture you posted is what it all looks like except for the 3 points the hinge is. There would be a decent size gap, but there is a rainseal (useless) at the leading edge of the rudder that contacts the aft end of the vertical stab.

A picture will explain it 1000x better than I can with words. I'll get some on Friday for you (We have off work until then b/f of the 4th of July). If you can think of any you will need for the next 2 weeks as well , let me know before Friday. I will be gone for 10 days after that PTDY and not be around any jets again until the 17th.

I had to strain to find a point missing information, you've almost covered every square centimetre of the aircraft. A missing and interesting region is the underside of the horizontal stabelizer where it joins to the moving horizontal panel. Close to the fuselage there are a lot of small gaps, pistons and fingers and I'm not sure which one is the hinge and what the other small features are. Other than that, I'm unlikely to run into trouble.

As for the aeleron, I have a question about it. Does it hinge around a few pistons or does it make a sliding movtion as well as a rotating motion because it seems to be attached to something slightly more complicated than a hinge though it almost behaves like one.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

The aileron is moved by 1 actuator, you can see part of it sticking out the backs of stations 1 and 11. It is not one one continuous hinge either, it is a few big hinges (I think 3? can't remember off the top of my head)

The bottom of the horizontal stab and the elevator look the same on the bottom as they do the top. There is just a little less of the cover panel covering the hinges.

I'm modeling the horizontal stabelizer according to how I think it looks based on all pictures I have. I'll then display all the parts disconnected from eachother. Maybe this will make it easier for you to tell me how the hinges and cover panels will look together and get the right pictures.

Done:

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/59086592/

This shows what I think is there: A U-shaped groove in the trailing edge of the horizontal fixed panel along the horizontal direction in order to house the horizontal stabelizer. I can;t think of much else and do not know how thick the covering panels are and how they cover up the hinges.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

Pictures will explain it much better than I can.

Pics sent

I've managed to complete the base form of the gearpod.

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/59650005/

I don't have any questions about it or picture requests I have all the information I need. I'm just happy I finally managed to get something right for a change. The tip of the gearpod is a very specific enbsemble of NURBS surfaces that took a very long time to evolve but the result is quite simple, fortunately. I will need this kind of ensemble a lot.

I do have a question about the rear landing gear though. The wheels appear to be pointing slightly inward when the gear is up, but they are straight when the gear is down and the aircraft is resting on the tarmac. Do the wheels axes bend a little bit when the aircraft is resting on its landing gear?

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

I think it's just an optical illision, the wheels bending. The MLG is pretty solid. It's not gonna flex.

I have used a straight bottom view taken from a great distance, eliminating perspective effects. The 2 wheels are simply not parallel relative to eachother... No matter how I look at it. The thing is, there is no sign of this when the aircraft is on the ground, in not a single picture.

Not knowing how to resolve this I could simply make the wheels allign, but then the gear bays will quite simply not fit into the gearpod.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

Well, sometimes when the jet is on tripod jacks, the wheels look a little but like the top part of them is a tiiiiiiinnyyyy bit more outboard than the bottom part. But thats the wheel, the strut is solid.

No object on the entire model is smooth and I will now finally admit it: I can never fix it with my current software. If you knew every corner of the seemingly pretty picture you'd know it's really a scrapheap.

I'm going to quit for a fairly long time while I find out which specific modules of the pretty expensive CATIA 5 program I need to carry out my task. I think it's time to get professional and match my needs to my tools exactly.


Edit: The same company (Dassult systems) also offers a CAD program called Solidworks... It seems it's in a lower price range and it's at least a lot more fit for designing than Maya...

Edit2: Solidworks is good, it has got an entire toolset dedicated to maintaining smooth transitions between loose surface components, and these transition surfaces can also be controlled more precisely than is possible in Maya or even a lot of other CAD programs. A couple of designers must've bumped into the same mess as I did, but then a few years ago.

Edit3:Unfortunately I'll need to use windows while I've got an expensive powermac right now. I will now need to find the cheapest system the software's requirements will let me get away with.

Edit4: I'm going to need a powerful rig in order to create my 3D models with Solidworks. Professional CAD programs don't have to be compatible with cheap 3D cards as these programs are entirely intended for the professional consumer. It looks like I'll need to sell my old computer which is still quite new and than buy a state of the art workstation which can run Windows (urk) or, UNIX.

Edit5: I'm also to blame for my ugly model. I've stuck to precisely to my reference curves derived from A-10 pictures. I noticed that they don;t get more reliable when they get older, one at the nose of the aircraft has a sharp bend that should be smoother. This error went unnoticed for 4 months. I should disregard pieces of my reference curves when they cause me to make the aircraft look different from the total picture as seen on photographs in any way... This is a warning against rules set in stone when they don't deserve to be.

Edit6: Nothing's happening. Now it's going to be a long wait for my new Intel based Mac and Solidworks... It'll be a while until I can afford a brand new intel based Mac.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

I've cooled down enough to resume operations... I can now fix whatever errors have been caused by my lack of skill but not by the program. I've basically chewed through the entire 1500 page help section on NURBS.

First order of business is the nose cone. I think I know why it's out of shape now: the white H just below the refueling port appears to have a different length on each aircraft. I checked this by looking at the first seam in the fuselage which runs across the bug eyes and goes all around the nose. Sometimes the seam runs through the white H, sometimes it misses it entirely. The H has been a very important mark for me, and if it's off by about 1-2 inch, that means distortions of up to 10% in the nose cone, because it is a small thing itself.

I just need to know, is this true?

Second item. I suspect there are unnatural dents in the nose cone, possibily due to the refueling hose smacking into the nose. Is this common?

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

Hogger,

You are correct on both counts. The white H is manually painted on the aircraft so it will have slight variations from aircraft to aircraft. As for the nose, yes it takes a beating from the IFR Boom during refueling operations.

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Faugh ah Ballaugh ~ Clear the Way

\"If there are a thousand problems, one just needs a thousand solutions.\"

I can't afford a state of the art Windoze workstation, and cheap new computers tend to blow up. I'm going to buy an old workstation that once cost $5k+, but is now over 6 years old. This means I got rather slow but high quality hardware. So no systems blowing up, and I'll be no more than $200 lighter. The program I need, SolidWorks, costs $4k at least, but since I'm a university student I can get an edu version. Edu versions of SW cost $80 at least. The bits and pieces of a final solution are coming together.

With SW's highly advanced NURBS surfacing and analysis tools I should be able to crank my A-10 model from the movie sfx to industrial precision standard.

In order to find out if SW is the right program I tried finding out if it's being used by people who are designing aircraft that actually need to fly in the real world, and I did. ( http://www.compositesworld.com/hpc/issues/2006/May/1318 ) It may not look like an A-10, but it contains the exact same design challanges as an A-10: Basic blunt-nosed fuselage, wings, control surfaces, and all mechanical devices needed to move them.

The second aircraft designed in SW that I found is the Chanute Aerobatic Aircraft. ( http://www.compositesworld.com/hpc/issu ... tember/203 ) Since it has to be highly aerodynamic, there are extreme demands on surface smoothness all along the fuselage. This proves to me that SW is fully capable of making my A-10 model perfectly smooth all over.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

$$$$$!!!!!!!!

I've provided the necesary proof to obtain an edu version of SW and the reseller got my cash, so now I just need to wait for the package to arrive at the mailbox.

I'm still looking for a cheap PC though. If that doesn't work out I can get one of those really cool intel duo core iMacs...

**23-08-2007**

Waiting endlessly for SolidWorks to arrive. I expect to receive a message that it has been shipped in bulk from the USA to the german reseller tomorrow, and a message that one piece got sent to me next week.

**26-08-2007**

Yea I got a message: SolidWorks won't be in stock until the beginning of september.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

**07-09-2007**

Finally, I got SolidWorks! I can get the old PC I was promised very soon as well, my friend just has to reinstall the harddrives he removed from it.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

What a bum week. My friend who was supposed to get a broken PC ready for me has been sick for over a week now, I can't use SolidWorks anywhere now. I've decided to buy a new computer, an intel based iMac, in a few days tops.

27/09/07

It's gonna be today. New computer, with Microsoft Windows....

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III