Official Luthiers Forum!

Just getting started with Rhino, and new to CAD. I'm halfway through the basic manual, but I've already got ants in my pants in regards to modelling a guitar.

I have a basic dreadnought outline and I've figure out how to extrude it to make the sides and a top/back. What I don't understand is how to put the radius in the sides and how to curve the top so it conforms to a radius of my choosing.

Forgive me if the elementary stuff. Like I said, I'm just getting started, but my mind is already trying figure what commands are used to create these shapes. I've watched a few YouTube videos and applied what I learned, but the results were not what I was expecting.

For the top I tried a NetworkSurface command using arcs drawn from neck block to tail and from side to side. When rendered it didn't seem consistent in the curvature.

As for the sides, I tried to do a Boolean Split with a 28' sphere, but couldn't get it to work.

I'm not looking for detailed instructions, but if someone could tell me I'm on the right path I'd be very grateful and I'll keep pressing on with learning those commands. Or perhaps there are better ways to create these surfaces. Loft? Sweep Rail?

Any help would be much appreciated

I would suggest creating a large surface with the cylindrical or spherical curvature you want, then project your dreadnought outline curve onto it and trim.

This worked! Thank you! You saved me a lot of time.

Glad to hear it worked.

I'm about 10 years into Rhino with no previous CAD experience and I found it very challenging at first, but if you stick with it I think you'll find that it's an amazing tool and becomes very easy to use.

After gaining confidence in Rhino it started using its Grasshopper plugin about 5 years ago, and it has also been challenging but it's really a tool of unlimited potential in my opinion. Allows you to generate parametric models in Rhino using a graphical programming environment.