Battling to skin complex fuselage

PAYBACK

Hi Guys

I've sketched a fuselage for a Hydrofoil I'm building and have gotten to a point where I have got the basic shape (top,side) merged together and I'm looking to skin it into a 3D form. I found a youtube clip on how to do this but it does not go into blending of more complex shapes.

I've tried the Follow me and Push/Pull tools but i can't seem to get them to do what I want with my limited knowledge.

Thanks in advance....

TIG

You need to break it down into 'bite-sized-chunks'.
I'd recommend using a mesh making tool like Fredo's CurviLoft or my ExtrudeEdgesByRails etc...
There are lots of posts about this kind of thing...

PAYBACK

@tig said:

You need to break it down into 'bite-sized-chunks'.
I'd recommend using a mesh making tool like Fredo's CurviLoft or my ExtrudeEdgesByRails etc...
There are lots of posts about this kind of thing...

Thanks TIG. Got your tool going to give it a bash. Thanks for the fast reply.

PAYBACK

TIG downloaded the tool but being a total n00b cant make heads or tales of it. Started doing the segment fill (painful) but to me it's not looking great. Having problem with some of the faces not reversing for some reason. Am I doing something wrong? am I on the right track? My OCD is not helping either

TIG

Hand-stitching like this is quite possible BUT very time consuming - the 'mesh'/'extrude' tools just automate it.
Make sure your new faces are oriented with 'white' outwards, not 'blue'...
Select and right-click > Reverse - make a shortcut key to this to speed it up...
Here's an EEbyRails quick bodge up...

pbacot

Yes, I think you are doing something wrong. Attached is an example of using 1/4 of (something sort of like) your shape and Extrude edges by rails once. (If your shape is symmetrical you only have to model half.) As TIG says, bite size pieces.

Note keep your curves in a group and take parts out for drawing each section. SU will cut your curves up, so, if, as you see I must do here, you need to reuse the curve for the next step, it will be difficult.

TIG having conceived and used the plugin forever, will have probably respond with a more elegant approach. But I thought I'd try to stop you wasting time.

[Edit: Oh well, TIG did a full Tut while I was plodding along with this. Can't be helped.

and as TIG suggests, each portion is a group so the geometry you have finished won't mess up your curves, and so forth, while you work on the next section.]

PAYBACK

Thanks very much for your time and effort TIG and pbacot. Think I have my head wrapped around things. TIG tried your method on the model I made and for some reason i kept getting wired outcomes. Tuns out there were a few pesky lines causing all the trouble (I think) At first I thought it might be because I used Bezier curves plugin. So I tried it on something similar for a test and result were great going to redo my model and apply your methods and see if I have better results.

So far a much better result