Today I found a way to unroll (develop, expand, unfold, unwrap) the body in ProE (with the insert/advanced/Flatten quilt command). I did not find an exact description about what it really does. It does works on surfaces with single and compound curvature so I have to guarantee that the surfaces are of single curvature only. Modeling surfaces with the style feature in ProE is not that easy. I'm having a trouble with connecting the surfaces and making the connections tangent (smooth). Also I don't know how to guarantee a surface is developable in ProE. If you can help me with this please drop
me a mail.
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Add study in ProE of a velomobile with front wheels inside. The gap between
the grey top cover and the red plating is a modeling fault. |
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Red plating is developable. The nose is not and could be thermo formed. The grey top and tail have compound curvature and can be made of cloth. The sketch shows some ideas I'm thinking about: Wheels inside, a tail of textile, a nose with compound curvature. Wheels inside will reduce the aerodynamic drag but limit the steering angle. An even better alternative would be to have the wheels covered with doors that open at sharp turns. A textile tail is light, easily removed, makes no noise and can have a beautiful saddle like compound curvature.
I am very happy I have (almost) found a way to get total control about the design. The last proto was modeled in Autocad (R14). Developing the sheets was done manually...
