F1 car design in Catia V5 xxv

Last time I didn't quite finish the airbox. So let's continue.

Next up is this transition from the airbox to the head rest

I'm going to essentially offset the bottom of the Front Airbox Opening

Here I've got a curve that matches the tangency and curvature of the offset

Now, I want to start putting together the face of the airbox opening. I'm going to create a flat sweep at the forward most point of the airbox.

Project the underside and airbox opening

Split

Split again using the car body

We're left with this

Now for the cockpit back, it looks like it's a slightly concave in the middle, whereas it looks straight at the bottom.

I'll use three lines as guides, one slightly set back in the center, bulging slightly outword on the sides

Project the outside lines onto the surfaces of the whole car

Chop the top off these guides

Create profiles in anticipation of a multi-sections surface

Create a couple of multi-section surfaces

If you trim the two, the result will be ambiguous, but it will allow you to fillet the edge. So select the surfaces to keep.

Fillet the edge.

Now we need to connect the two

I'll just copy and translate the airbox underside to be lower

Project it onto the surfaces

Split using the projection

Blend

Alright, now I'm going to split a bit of the headrest, airbox face, and airbox from the whole car. The goal of this is to blend them together

Here we are, after organizing a little bit

Extract edges and project

Join, smooth, offset

Project

Split

Now create a 3d curve to split the sides with. First offset the COCKPIT OPENING OUTSIDE EDGE curve on the zx plane

Then I'll just make a straight verticle line

Put a point on the offset curve and split it

Connect with a 3d curve imposing tangency and curvature. Join and smooth all.

Project onto the surfaces

Split

Split the projections

Blend

Quick mock up

F1 car design in Catia V5 xxiv

Well what would a project be without deadlines?

Lola would have had a championship crushing car if they would have had 10 years, a million hours of labor and an unlimited budget to design this car. They didn't. I don't either.

I've learned a ton, but it's time to start thinking what comes after the surface work. I set out a goal at the beginning of my vacation to have a monocoque I can work with by the end. I've only got a few days left. Time to get into "good is good enough mode" and get some more of these ideas on screen.

I have to get the cockpit back and airbox done today.

I think the simpliest part is the back of the monocoque

just a few lines. I'll do it in the sketcher workbench as it looks very geometric

Effect after trimming

I was really hoping that all the work on the surfaces would be that easy!

Next up will be to define the back of the cockpit, the area where the driver's headrest will be.

And define where the front of the airbox will be

So split the monocoque with this shape. We'll want this shape to make a face as well, but not trimmed where everything is joined together

We're going to systematically chop this face up

Now for the airbox opening itself. I consider this, along with the nose, the sidepod openings and the engine cowling to be the defining shapes of a F1 car of this era. In other words, the dimensions of the cars are all roughly the same due to the rules, but these shapes are different on every car, so special attention should be paid to getting these right. It took me 7 tries to get this right, now I'll go into how to do it.

 Extract some edges from the previous split and project them onto the yz plane

Join and smooth this

3d offset 23mm

Hide the original projection. Now I'm going to split this roughly where the lines are verticle.

By definition, this should be at this airbox guide

Draw a couple of lines and split it

Now draw verticle lines to define the sides

Next up the profile of the bottom of the airbox opening.

I'm going to put some points on these lines, split the lines, and connect them with a 3d curve to create fillets

Join and smooth curve

We're going to have to repeat all these steps to do the back of the airbox opening (the side that faces the engine). I can't just sweep this surface, because the airbox opening has a different profile at the back.

Here is the back airbox opening with the front in the background

Project these profiles

It'll be useful to project the points used to create the fillets as well

Create some guidelines

Make a multi-sections surfaces with these profiles and guides. With closed profiles, I think it's good idea to set the extremum definition to the z component direction.

Hide the profiles and guides

Just a quick mock up to see what's done so far. That's it for me tonight