Needing help with shell designing workflow

[FreeCutter]

Dear all,
I'm actually transforming my 3D CAD activity from SketchUp to FreeCAD! However, I'm still struggling with designing surfaces/planes being orientated across the 3D-space. Below image is a screen shot from SketchUp showing a shell around a trike bicycle (so you could call it a velomobile). However, the shell is a combination of single planes (rectangles or triangles) which had been designed by "drawing free in space" and by "moving" and "rotating" them by tools respectively. In reality the idea is to get the individual planes cut out from card board and then glued together applying some supporting substructure.

Could someone of you please give me an idea about how the workflow looks in FreeCAD to design such planes being combined to the entire shell?

Many thanks in advance!

[freedman]

Solid modeling isn't all that good at modeling sheet goods. Maybe the Arch workbench can do sheet stuff, don't know. You could do it in Part design using datum planes I suppose. If I had to do it, that's what I would do. Each piece of cardboard would be a Body, datum plane and a sketch. Datum planes can be rotated in 3 axis. I have never tried to connect sketch edges in multiple bodies modeled as multiple sheets, might work.

[vocx]

Dear all,
I'm actually transforming my 3D CAD activity from SketchUp to FreeCAD! However, I'm still struggling with designing surfaces/planes being orientated across the 3D-space.

Surfaces in space is more of the task of an organic modeller, like Blender. In Blender you can edit the vertices that make the mesh itself. A CAD program like FreeCAD is more designed for exact shapes and distances. But you can in fact use FreeCAD for something like this, but you have to be able to define lines in space, and extrude surfaces in the right directions. Use the Surface Workbench, and also add-ons like Curves Workbench. See external workbenches.

Below image is a screen shot from SketchUp showing a shell around a trike bicycle (so you could call it a velomobile).

You mean a tricycle?

...
Could someone of you please give me an idea about how the workflow looks in FreeCAD to design such planes being combined to the entire shell?

Watch some videos on drawing surfaces on space. See Video tutorials.

[chrisb]

Could someone of you please give me an idea about how the workflow looks in FreeCAD to design such planes being combined to the entire shell?

I understand the task is to create some sheets which you can unfold.

As the sheets are not given in advance you may start from the other end: Design some sort of wireframe to which you attach the planks later. I'm not sure on how to connect the planks so that you may use the SheetMetal workbench to unfold.