Help with modelling strategy [TRAINS]!

[nalmeida]

Hi there guys, my name is Nelson Almeida and I'm from Portugal. I've been using Sketchup from some time but mostly to model buildings and such. One of my hobbies is model railroading and recently I've been planing to model some Portuguese trains, I also have a CNC and would like to use it to help me model some trains.

My problem is that the trains I want to model are to "round", one of the features I'm not familiar in Sketchup is to work with curves so I would appreciate some help from the experts. First a photo and the plan of the prototype:

As you can see it's fairly round.

So my questions are:
What to would be the best strategy to approach this model?
Where to start?
Are there any plug ins I could use?
Since I plan to model it in HO scale (1/87) should I model it in real scale dimensions and downsize it later to 1/87?
Is Sketchup the right tool for this project?

Thanks in advance for any help,

Nelson

[numbthumb]

Hi, Nelson
Maybe trainboy2004 could help you with that - check out his thread http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=15831&hilit=train
Also, there is this modeling tutorial that might give you a rough idea:
http://rail3dwiki.markhodson.nl/index.php?n=Tutorials.MakingRail3DModelsWithGoogleSketchup
Being stuck with such rounded shapes, I´ve been reminded on two valuable plugins recently: Fredo´s Curviloft and TIG´s EEbyR - you can find them here:
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=23989

[Chris Fullmer]

Dolphus also makes some amazing trains in SketchUp. Check out his work too, and maybe ask him questions:

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=21158

[numbthumb]

Indeed, I completely forgot about his "Railway Drawing" thread

[nalmeida]

Thanks for the tips guys, I'm progressing in this model and I'll show a pic or two as soon as I have something to show.