Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fuselage loft model

grabcad

This is a work in progress. I am lofting the fuselage of the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. This is the version with the teardrop canopy. It is a great example of how competent Rhinoceros is for marine, aircraft, and even automotive lofting. I probably should make a tutorial for this. The loft data is from Republic Aircraft Corporation drawing 93F12199. It is interesting that the offsets on this drawing are recorded to 0.001 inch accuracy. That means their loftsmen probably did their work at some increased scale in the lateral and vertical axes. I think they gained no advantage from this, as their resulting loft points don't seem to be fair to that accuracy. Today we have better tools, and the original work is extremely good for the tools they had. So far I have tried to represent this loft with a surface parameterised with just 14 x 9 control points. The fewer, the better, because it is easier to keep the surface fair. Later, if required, it is super easy in Rhino to add new rows of control points, just where we need them. 'Sorry if it sounds like I am plugging Rhino, but I have been using it in serious projects since pre-launch beta testing days. I work in the automotive industry with extremely expensive CAD software, but Rhino is better, and super competent for a lot of the work I do.