Step 2: Modelling

After I got my resources together, I knew I would have an uphill battle. Modeling a monorail car is easy, sketch out the profile and extrude it out to length. What I didn't know how to do was model the cab. The problem with the cab is that it curves in multiple directions, and a cad program like inventor doesn't handle freeform shapes very well. Engineering things are usually made up of simple shapes. My first attempt was pretty bad, using only the tools in Inventor that I knew well.

Yeah, pretty sad

 Using the profiles I had, I extruded the back, and cut the sides. This left me with something that looked good in the profile views, but terrible in general. My problem was, I didn't know how to do any better. I was beginning to think that what I was trying to do wasn't possible in Inventor. I started to look into other modeling programs, but I was overwhelmed. After ruling out an easy transition to another modeling program, I took motivation in the loading screen of Inventor, with all these free flowing shapes. But how do they make them? I did what I always do, and asked Reddit. Reddit told me about "surface modeling" and "the loft tool". I had never dealt with just surfaces, usually in Inventor, you deal in solids. You can extrude solids from sketches, you can cut solids with sketches. Its surprising the amount of things you can do just by adding and subtracting straight lines of material. Sadly, making a monorail cab is not one of these things. I started watching youtube videos and looking up guides and experimenting with the loft tool to make surfaces rather than solids. The loft tool creates a surface between two drawn profiles along a drawn path. My first attempts were not very good. The problem with the loft tool is that it makes a lot of assumptions while trying to make a smooth surface.

That shape is sorta nice, but there are some terrible folds

I tried to give it some more information about the profile

I call this one Lumpy

Wait that doesn't look too bad

Looking pretty monorail like, but without the bottom skirts

At this point, I decided I had a model that was worthy of a print, not because it was perfect, but to see what I had to change to get it there.

Those are 1 inch squares

When you are able to get your hands on the model, it is much easier to see where the problems are versus its representation on the screen. The main thing I needed to change was the goiter the cab had. There was a little too much curve on the underside of the nose.

From here I did what any sane person would do, and started over completely with my now honed knowledge of the loft tool.

Final Product

I had some trouble with the skirts, and by a stroke of total luck, after days of trial and error, I stumbled upon something that worked after I accidentally did something. I don't think I could replicate how I did it if I wanted to, so I called this version close enough. I was proud of the final product, and that's all I could ask for.