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Gmax - How do you make the wings??

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217
Country
venezuela
Hello guys, I'm new in this subforum and I wanna know about the most used ways for make the aircraft wing with the flaps included in Gmax

Thank you :cool:
 

hairyspin

Resource contributor
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3,253
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unitedkingdom
Hello Juan, you might as well ask for the most-used way of packing a suitcase efficiently! There's a variety of ways and none is exactly suitable for all shapes and styles of wing.

Some people take a cylinder and adjust the vertices until they have a decent aerofoil; some take a series of cross-sections and draw splines to match, then apply cross-section and surface modifiers; others just bodge a basic shape around with taper and FFD modifiers until it "looks right".

For a tutorial that covers basic wing shaping plus cutting the ailerons and flaps, try Milton Shupe's C162 tutorial.
For a spline + modifiers method try the Cross Section Modelling tutorial for Gmax at FFDS

Hope this helps!
 
Messages
10,088
Country
us-arizona
When I first started out in FSDS, I would make wings out of a cylinder. You go into Vertice (points) mode and move the dots around till its a wing shape. Move them from side view.


Now, years later, using the high tech Gmax, I make very elaborate wing shapes with Splines using Bezier adjustment handles. I make a complete Spline in the exact shape I need, then make it a flat editable Poly and extrude it out. Then use FFD's to bend it nicely into shape. Taper is also a good tool for getting it bent the right way.

Whats really tricky is getting into making the wing in sections, like wing/flap-aileron in flat Splines, and extruding them out, then finishing the wingroot and wingtip assemblies. That is so much better then the old cylinder method, but....! You have to start somewhere and work your way up.

So many ways to make wings.... So many...



Bill
 
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Messages
206
Country
netherlands
Well, it's not as high tech as the latest Max or Lightwave, but it is high tech.

:D:D:rotfl:

But anyway, i feel that the method using a spline with as few vertices as possible (and as Lionheart said, use the bezier functions on the vertices of the spline for a smooth shape) and extruding it out is the way to go.

You wanna go hardcore? :scratchch
Then you can also use a real airfoil shape as a background so that the shape matches the real thing (not that it makes any difference in the sim nor will anyone notice except for the fellow fanatics which populate this forum, but it makes for a nice feature in the readme that no-one actually reads :D).

Check out this website for airfoil shapes:
http://www.worldofkrauss.com/

This wing was made by using that method, and applying a taper and a bend modifier for the extra "knick" at about a third of the wingspan, it is a bit of a gull wing.
The tip was made by using the loft function.
The flaps and aileron were made by using a boolean with a couple of boxes.
The fairing is a loose part that was connected later on.
To the left you can see the NACA64(2) 415 airfoil shape i used (i moved it a bit more to the left for this screenshot, normally it is located at the wingroot)

I think it looks pretty darn good for the non professional hobbyist that i am ;).

But one step at the time... first try to get the wing the way you like it best and worry about the rest later.
Chances are you'll be redoing it anyway, if you're anything like me :rolleyes:.

grt
Willem
 

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206
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netherlands
Beautiful job on the wingtip Willem! What method did you use to cap it?
Thanks!!

Well i made an effort to get the loft shape as smoothly flowing with the wingprofile as i could and then i simply attached the two together so that i could create polygons to fill in the blanks.
Remember that you can apply some modifiers to the loft within the Loft function itself, under the deformations tab (see screenshot 1, this is in Max7, but i believe that it is also present in Gmax).
And then a little bit of welding vertices here and there to get the edges straight.

Making sure that smoothing groups are correct made the transition nice and smooth, well enough so for my purposes.

Well that was the process in a nutshell :D, in reality i found that as you can see in the screenshots the polycount for the tip was way too high :banghead:.
So i redid the thing by using the same method but with a simpler shape.
You see first time i selected all the edges of the leading edge to become the shape to guide along the path with the loft, but that was just too much.
So second time around i used far less edges, which resulted in a rougher shape but that can be corrected by using the smoothing groups and clever welding of vertices.
This is actually caused by being a bit too generous with the interpolation setting during the very beginning of creating the wing shape, just don't tell anyone... :ziplip:

As i said before, you'll be redoing things on a regular basis!

grt
Willem
 

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Messages
217
Country
venezuela
Thank you guys for the help ;)

Willem, the airfoil site looks very usefull, but I don't know what airfoil uses the ERJ-170/190 and the MD-80 because I'm very lost here :eek:
 
Messages
206
Country
netherlands
Well for Embraer 170 i don't know, google might help...
There is this website which gives you a lot of airfols and aircraft, unfortunately no Embraer 170, but the MD80 is mentioned though!

http://www.ae.illinois.edu/m-selig/ads/aircraft.html

I wouldn't put too much effort in this, no-one will see which airfoil you exactly used.
It's just that for the F27 that 'm working on i had the data available to me so i figured why not make use of it?
In my case it took just about as much energy to create an airfoil myself than to make it the same as the real thing, so why not go for the real thing.

grt
Willem
 
Messages
10,088
Country
us-arizona
With X-Plane, presently, you need the proper wing foil, but not with FS.

Also, on such planes as airliners, so much of the wing is nothing but panels that slide out, hinge up, or flap up and down. Forward flap slats, top side spoiler / speed brakes, some have dual and 4 stage flaps following and dual stage ailerons. Only the core of the wing is solid. Thats why I was saying, its almost easier to create these sections in a flat Spline assembly, all of them pre-set, and extrude the entire thing. Then you have all your flaps and ailerons and leading flap slats, etc, etc, pre done and you only need to detach them when its all done and animate them.
 

hairyspin

Resource contributor
Messages
3,253
Country
unitedkingdom
Check out this website for airfoil shapes:
http://www.worldofkrauss.com/

There is this website which gives you a lot of airfols and aircraft,...http://www.ae.illinois.edu/m-selig/ads/aircraft.html

Thanks for those links Willem, my own were out of date. :)

I've also used the shareware Profili which generates an aerofoil in .dxf format for you, although I had to cut down the vertex count a lot - 100 might be a tad over the top. :eek: I originally heard of this on the late lamented Netwings site.

Profili 2
 
Messages
217
Country
venezuela
Well for Embraer 170 i don't know, google might help...
There is this website which gives you a lot of airfols and aircraft, unfortunately no Embraer 170, but the MD80 is mentioned though!

http://www.ae.illinois.edu/m-selig/ads/aircraft.html

I wouldn't put too much effort in this, no-one will see which airfoil you exactly used.
It's just that for the F27 that 'm working on i had the data available to me so i figured why not make use of it?
In my case it took just about as much energy to create an airfoil myself than to make it the same as the real thing, so why not go for the real thing.

grt
Willem

Hello again :)

Well, according to that site the airfoil of the MD-80 series are the DSMA-433A/-434A and DSMA-435A/-436A, and I couldn't find them on internet, the only DSMA airfoil I found from http://www.worldofkrauss.com/ was the 523A and 523B

Downloaded the pdf file from the Boeing website with the MD characteristics but still nothing about the airfoils :banghead:
 

hairyspin

Resource contributor
Messages
3,253
Country
unitedkingdom
Well, according to that site the airfoil of the MD-80 series are...

Email the guy who maintains the site and ask him politely if he has any pics of these aerofoils in his collection. You never know.
 
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