This is my own method how to start modeling a 3d bodywork (or anything 3d) based on a flat 2d drawing.
For this example, I found the blueprints of the McLaren M8A CanAm, one of the most exciting vintage racecar. This is definitely not the most complex shape to translate into a 3d model but it's a good example.
You need a blueprint with at least a front and a side view of the car. If you also have a rear and a top view it's much better. Any additional detail will help you to be as close as possible to a original drawing.
Here is the original drawing. I just scanned it and saved it in a jpg format, after an image scaling.
Then I import this scanned jpg image to my software in a new clear drawing.
I use then different tools such as curves, splines, arc, circles and so to retrace the shape and most of the more important elements of the vehicle.
There is several methods to make a real life model based on a 3d file, such as 3d printing or milling. Most of them are expensive, very expensive. You need either to own one of these machines or outsource your work to someone who own one.
But there is also an other method that everyone can perform without any special tools or machine and here is how I do.
First of all, I stretch my 3d model into the scale I want it to be :
Then draw a section every X inch/mm depending on the material that you decide to use for your scale model.
In my case, I decided to use a 5mm thick foam board (3$) for my sections for a final size/length of the model about 11 inches.
My first post will be about my favorite car project that I developed from scratch. Its name is Dragon-R Formula and it is an ultralight single seater and open wheeler with a motorcycle engine.
I created this car to give an answer to my own kid's dreams. Indeed, when I was a teenager I loved to go and watch these hillclimbs and track racing event and to admire all those real racing cars that are open wheelers.
Back then, I imagined myself behind the steering wheel of one of those, feeling the extraordinary sensations that gives only an open real race car. But the reality was that I haven't had the fortune necessary to drive one of them and also the driving skills required to go fast and not to kill myself. So eventually I started go-kart racing, which is a much more affordable discipline. Later I made the choice to design and engineer cars instead of driving them but I still kept this passion on the side and stayed an amateur driver.
Someday I decided that this machine affordable enough for most of the people must be created. You cannot be completely broke, but most of the middle-class peeps could potentially afford a car like that or, if not, someone else, like a racing school could rent it out to you.
Anyways, the specs were simple : make it simple, light and not expensive, keep all the ingredients that define a real racing car and the quality+safety high. And this is how was born the single seater Dragon-R Formula after about 2'000 hours of labor including designing, engineering, fabricating, and track testing to improve reliability.
I did it as a side job, in addition of my already very demanding daytime job back then which was engineer and project manager for a french company specialized in making prototypes for the big names in the automotive industry in Europe.
