My own very simple Red Baron's Fokker Dr. 1

[Rubenandres77]

This following pictures show one of the major problems I faced.

The struts worked fairly well in the blank beta builds. But when downscaling, and when working on cardstock (not photocopy paper) things changed drastically.

My first attempt was to go for "3-D" struts. But the end result after making the first one was just awful. At that size, and with cardstok, the parts are far from easy, and they are not forgiving at all.

I decided to improvise and go for the easier, less complex, and faster flat struts.

Since I had designed the landing gear struts in the same way, I had to modify them too. Not able to re-draw and re-print those parts while I was building, I had to improvise a bit.

The finished kit will fix properly this defects.

The positive thing of this: besides knowing the defects, and the opportunity to correct them, this strut modification means that the number of parts of the kit went from 20 to just 16

[Rubenandres77]

Last pictures of the building process.

[Rubenandres77]

And now: pictures of the finished model.

As usual, I include a picture with my cell phone for scale.

I'm working now on correcting the mistakes, re-drawing some parts, and re-designing others. Hopefully the final release will be in the following days, once I'm sure all mistakes are properly fixed (including the R:255 issue :o)

[corduroy]

wow - looks rather good, niebla.

Im just a beginner.. and am just learning about the actual designing process... and thanks for the insight into your process.. but Im curious - did you design the whole thing in Coral ?

[ghshinn]

Beautifully done. The flat struts look great, and a lot easier to build.

Garland

[Rubenandres77]

Originally Posted by corduroy

wow - looks rather good, niebla.

Im just a beginner.. and am just learning about the actual designing process... and thanks for the insight into your process.. but Im curious - did you design the whole thing in Coral ?

Actually, I'm also new to design. This is the first paper model I design in my life, and I've found it is very interesting.

The design started with some drawings on paper. Thanks to the Fokker Dr1 being a simple plane with basic shapes, and since the idea was to make an approximation to the plane (not a precise-scale model) I found it easy to develop (unfold) the parts. Some inspiration was borrowed from other models. That helped a lot when putting things together.

As you can see, this model was very simple, and I didn't use any 3-D design software mostly because I don't have any 3-D modelling software :o. But also because I relied on my geometry and technical drawing classes. I was good at that, and I'm glad I still remember some things after all those years.

I Used Corel only to trace the plans and draw each part. It was funny, because I needed to rotate each part several times, measure carefully each line, imagine how they would fold/unfold. Almost the same process that can be done with paper, ruler, compass and eraser, but on the PC screen.

I believe that if the parts were more complex, and if more detail were added, it would have been impossible for me to draw it on Corel alone.

I would also love to learn more about designing. By reading other threads in this forum I've found very inspirational things. If a new model appeals me enough, I might try to use a real model designing software, instead of trying to go 2-D alone.

Best wishes!

Originally Posted by ghshinn

Beautifully done. The flat struts look great, and a lot easier to build.

Garland

Thanks
I hope this model will be enjoyable to build and nice to show once finished.

[corduroy]

gee niebla, that's really good going... I cant imagine my first attempt at working out a design and fold out would be that good. Well done !!

I think when I venture into this field Id try SketchUp and Inkscape.... but Im currently looking into fold out types of software. Ive tried gimp in the past but it seems tricky to learn.. maybe I should take another look at that. (As I expect you may already know - all these programs are free ones.. so are worth a look.)

..actually I rather like the brightness of your model. Its quite cheery (and fun) looking.

[Rubenandres77]

I just published this model in my DeviantArt account. You can get it for free from here:
Fokker Dr1 Paper model by ~Rubenandres77 on deviantART

And I will upload it to the downloads section of this forum in the following minutes.

[outersketcher]

It was neat to see the photos from the very first notebook scribbles to the final thing.
Thank you.
Please continue with more of these.

[Zathros]

She is a beauty! A suggestion? If you take about 4 feet of steel wire, tie one end to something solid, thank steadily pull it, you will feel it give and the subsequent wire will be very stiff. Once cut into small pieces (2 or 3 inches) they become very very stiff and sandwiched between struts could make for pretty solid assemblies. This is how you harden wire. Works great for axles of biplanes, propeller shafts for rubber band planes, wing wring on the cross sections, like real bi-planes, they won't stress out the paper.

This what we did when I worked for a company that made aircraft instrument parts. It works with any gauge wire, it just gets a little tricking with really thin stiff. Works great on Silver wire also.

The plane needs nothing. I only offfer this suggestion because I (still) play with most things I build, even if it is just siting on the sofa making vroom and rat ta tatat tat sounds.