Too difficult to do in Dietrichs??

Hi.

I have often been thinking about to try to make a 3D model of a bow in Dietrichs. But I am afraid that it is not possible to make satisfactory nice. Examples: Border Bows, White Wolf bows, my own bow: [/img] and a special type of compound bow: Monster Bows.

It is actually something like the latter type of bow I'd like to make a 3D model of - but with my own design made in wood. I am finished with making the drawings / sketches of the design by hand.

In the pure 3 dimensions, it is perhaps not so difficult. But the rounded shapes that makes a wooden bow so beautiful - just the grip as one example - would be very difficult to make in Dietrichs, I think.

What do you think?

Yes, ok that could be first step. Take my hand drawings (side view), convert them to dxf and - how do you extrude the 2D drawing??

Then you have the side view, then maybe make the rear / front view the same way, but make it as a "mold" and use intersecting volumes, to make the cuts that define the rear / front view??

The last and probably more difficult step would be to make the more or less rounded edges - especially the grip.

By the way, would you do it in wall design or solely in D-Cam? I think, I would suggest wall design.

Bolts and other "external" steel parts, are probably more or less made in the same way - perhaps in other positions and inserted on the bow. See also this webpage, where there are pictures of some of these details, like hinges and such: http://www.bowreports.com/comp…nster/phoenix/phoenix.htm

Well I am not using Dietrichs to build bows, I am using it to build buildings. Archery and designing a bow is a free time thing. I just thought it could be interesting to see, if I could make the bow I have designed, in 3D in Dietrichs. I don't have a AutoCad software, so I can't make the drawing you suggest.

Cinema4D - looks good, but looks expensive. Do you know what it costs? For example Engineering Edition?

Hmmm., maybe worth to look at. Basically - to make the extrutions in the 2, perhaps 3 directions with intersecting volumes and such, should be quite ok to do. Then basically I just need to take that and round off some of the forms. Maybe this last step could be done easily in Blender.

Wonder if I could also do all this in ProgeCad - a cheap ACad software.

Well, maybe it's not worth it. Maybe I'll just try and see how far I can get in Dietrichs. I can make the roundings by making molds of straight pieces that are copied and rotated and intersecting volumes. This would give a near rounding shape. If it is made on a CNC machine - I think - it would still need some handcrafting afterwards for finishing.

It's just that I saw Markus once make one of these double curved roofs - it seemed like he had a net, where he could drag single points to change the form.

I have also, I think, seen people here talking about making bended wood pieces. Is that possible? That could be for the bow limbs.