Ok, got all the programms needed, now what ?

[Dancooper]

Ok, the title kind of says it, but I've got all the programs needed 3Ds, Rhino, Blender, Photoshop... so, how do I start "designing"... ? Well, tbh "designing" in 3D would kind of be doable (following a turorial for "building" a virtual model ship), but what do you do once you "have" a 3d model ???

[thorst]

The heart of the design process is to decide where the edges of the parts are. If you have a 3D model which consists only of developable surfaces (this means that there is no point on the surface in which the curvature goes in two directions, like on a sphere), you can just develop the model.
But in most cases your prototype will have compound courves which have to be devided in such a manner that it is still buildable but also gives a good representation of the original shape. An easy way to brak down such a model is to extract cross section courves at important stations and then "loft" a sourface between pairs of them. These new surfaces have to be developable. The art of designing is to find the best positions for these cross sections and to decide if they are all parallel or angeled to each other or even are not planar.
If my description is too confusing, just think about how you would make paper parts to build a sphere, and look at different approaches of various designers, you will find that there are a lot of different approaches, and every one has its advantages and disadvantages.

Thorsten

[Karl]

Haha sort of reminds me of a joke about the get fit ads from the 60's.

Dear Sir, I have completed the course please send the muscles.

or in this case

Dear Sir, I have bought the software please send the skills.

Sorry Dan, just joking, I am in a similar situation. I can draw to a rasonable engineering standard in 3d but converting that into a usable paper model eludes me.
I will be following this thread with keen interest.

[lisatnp]

google videos on the subject- there are lots.
i have been messing around with sketch-up trying to figure out
how to make my own.it's a slow process but fun.

[codex34]

Start simple and learn as you go, for example how about a christmas baubel?, like thorst says, sounds simple enough but it should show you how many decisions go into even a simple model, with just the 3D sphere alone you need to figure out how many parts/sections and how smooth to make it, then you got colour and textures on top of that.
You see your not making a 3D model, your making a paper/card model in 3D, you need to design it to be buildable, it takes longer to convert a 3D model to a paper/card model than to design it as a paper/card model.

Design things you want to build but remember your first few attempts will be awful in comparison to your later attempts and others models(in your own mind), but you have to make those first steps.

Lastly i'd like to point out that there are really only 2 types of parts to any model, cone sections and box sections, a scifi laser cannon is cone sections mounted on box sections, a pokemon is just cone sections, and a ship is cone sections with both cone and box sections glued to it. A tube is an odd shaped cone

[Retired_for_now]

Browse the design threads, some are very detailed on the basic process. There's no 3-D modelling software in it, but I tried to cover the basics here: Magellan Venus - designing and building the old-fashioned way
or for an airplane: T-37 the hard way . You can get a better result with more sophisticated projective geometry - or leave it to the computer. Key to transitioning to a model is deciding how to divide things up into "parts."
Coverting from basic drawing to 3-D modelling I leave as an exercise (for you smarter people).
Yogi (no recent white-out on the monitor ...)

[Spartacus]

Lots of 3DX Max tutorials on Youtube.

Perhaps most importantly go to the official Youtube Channel and start with Getting Started.

youtube.com/user/3dsMaxHowTos

Check out their Getting Started, Modelling, and Materials & Mapping collections. Lots of user-created tutorials up on YT too.