Best practice to create a model from technical drawings

gauthier_östervall

I have the technical drawing for a tramway, from which I would like to create a 3D model. I have the front view, side view, top view.

What would a good method be, to create the 3D model from the drawing?

My naive approch would be to import the images, place them in sketches in relevant planes, draw a sketch over the drawing, then Extrude-Intersect a blob with these three sketches.

The drawing looks like this (I have the front view as well, it's very simple):


I see already that it will probably fail to make correct corners.

What would be the rough steps you would take, to create such a model?

MichaelPascoe

Hi @gauthier_östervall, you are right. Intersecting will not give you the rounded look that this drawing has. There are quite a few different ways to go about this, it will depend on how exact you want to match the drawing.

Here are some steps if you just want a quick model that looks like it:

1. Sketch the top view.
2. Extrude with a draft
3. Use an A-symmetric fillet for the top.
4. Shell, to make the part hollow.
5. Sketch the side view.
6. Cut out the windows and other details with the side sketch. You may need to use Split as well, then Thicken to get some window trim and other details like that.

If you are going for a more exact approach, you will most likely need to create guide sketches and preform several lofts for the main body. Create sub assemblies of all of the parts, then assemble them into a main assembly.

What is your end goal? A quick model, or production ready?

gauthier_östervall

MichaelPascoe said:

What is your end goal? A quick model, or production ready?

Thanks for the reply!

The real end goal for that specific model is to 3D print small miniatures for a board game. So not at all an exact approach.

BUT, this is not the first time I ask myself this question, so I wanted to take the opportunity to learn how to do it "the right way".

When you write "Create sub assemblies", do you mean a Part Studio per such sub assembly, then put together in an actual Assembly tab? And do you mean for the details, or even split the main body into sub-parts?

MichaelPascoe

I see, then there are still different options to approach it. For 3D printing miniatures, you will not need an assembly with incredible detail. You can simply have one Part studio with one part, since the miniature will most likely be one piece I assume.

See the Cyber truck example in the Intersect Views document. It shows how to split the parts faces for details. After the faces are split, you can Thicken them for printable detail. This is a great example for a printable part. Intersect views custom feature wont work perfectly for this train, as your train has rounded parts.

shawn_crocker

I would also get in some basic extrudes of the three different views overlapping each other.  From there it will probably be more clear where you need to start creating guides and curve's for lofting more complex geometry that is unable to be fully communicated from the straight on views.  I rarely do this though but I usually find when starting, the approach changes dramatically as soon as you see those basic geometry blocks on screen.  In my case, I often just end up scrapping it and modeling the majority of it by eye.