New winter project!
 

All I need is a welder, a miter box, a drill press, and to learn how to use all three. Oh, and the driver's seat out of my WRX.

Austin, give me some feedback... and no bitching about the drawings, I've only got a copy of Microsoft Visio. I really need a simple 3D modeling tool to draw this right, it's tough to understand w/o a decent perspective drawing.

I haven't used it in a while, but the editing software from emachineshop.com can handle basic solids. Looks like you could do what you're trying to make in it.

Also, I've got a non-sliding bracket for the driver's front seat of an Impreza if you want to borrow it as a template so you can mount your stocker directly to your new frame.

Take a look at this one for some ideas.

http://www.nascar.com/2006/news/busi...eat/index.html

Concept looks good, I'm not sure I understand the pedal mounts though. An Iso view would help things. Is this something you'll be doing yourself, or are you going to give drawings to somebody else so they can weld up the frame? The dwgs have lots of dimensions missing; there would need to be more info spec'd if you have anyone else work on it.

I was also thinking a keyboard platform cantilevered off to the side of where you sit might be better IMO, so it's not obscured under the wheel and/or hitting you in the knees.

What is this? a game controller?

The pedal mounts allow normal pedal mounting w/ 3 adjustable tilt positions, plus the mounting of my PC pedals which are over mounted (like most real cars) with 2 adjustable tilt positions.

This is just a quick set of drawings I threw together within the limitations of Visio. If you look at it w/ the grid lines Visio has during drawing it's much easier to see dimensions. Plus, all the dimensions will likely change anyway once I pull the seat out of the WRX and sit in it and measure myself.

The goal is to have a frame that can hold a wheel, plus room for stashing a keyboard and a mouse on it. Plus a lower side table for a shifter on the right. I'm thinking about making it symmetrical so it can also be used for a flight stick/throttle... but that would drastically limit ingress/egress. Currently there's a ton of space on the left to get in/out of the thing w/o having to slide the seat.

I'm also attempting to make the pedal box and seat mount adjustable via several mounting holes between the sub-frames. So you can move the pedals or seat back/forward in 2" increments. That's in addition to the retained factory seat rails that provide finer fore/aft and height adjustment.

I'd be building this myself... as the tools and skill needed to build it would be useful for race car work as well.

He wants to make a whole sim cockpit, for racing sims.

While Scott is busy designing this contraption his girlfriend is laying naked in the next room wondering why she had to fall for a nerd.

:lol: hahahaha, I was thinking the same thing....whooooooo. :lol:

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

I designed one once. Except mine had a couple of cup holders, and a mini fridge.

I was going to build it to, but then I spent all my money on black jack, and hookers.

That's kind of like a winter project

just make it out of pvc

oh and have the whole bottom made into a fish tank, yeah thats how you need to do it.

Scott, go to
www.sketchup.com

You can download the same 3d program I use for free. It is very intuitive and you will be able to model it accurately in 3d.

If you need some help getting started, just let me know.

Google sketchup is sweet! Here's what I drew up in a little over 2 hours:

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehou...e727ea&rtyp=lt

I'll finish it up some time with the details, but if you've got sketchup, you can download it here:

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehou...bf90e027e727ea

Glad to see you got a copy of Sketchup that was what I would have recommended if I had seen this sooner. I love that software.

Neat. If you prototype something, you might want to consider protecting your intellectual property.

It's on Google under my name, and timestamped. So if Logitech suddenly starts selling this thing (unlikely) I can probably prove in court they ripped me off.

But frankly, I'm not all that worried... it's not like this design is totally original.

Yah don't they have those the Sharper Image? It looks like it uses metal and glass.

Keep up the good work and you will have a new job waiting for you here in Truckee!

It is an amazing program Scott. Now apply materials to it.

Your model looks really clean for a first time shot at it. If you go into the user forums there are tons of cars modeled in sketchup from yugos to ferraris. I do all my design work and even construction documents in that program now. The most incredible part about the program is the file sizes are so small.

Nice work!

Sketchup is cool, I use it to plan out and draw speaker cabinets and subwoofer enclosures. Looks good Scott, what material are you planning on using for the frame? Steel seems like it would be kind of heavy, but aluminum is harder to weld if you are new at it.

Aluminum is very hard to weld. If you want to get it done for cheap you can have a student do it. I have done welding for about 8 years and i still dont like welding aluminum. You can take your design to RTI and find a student there who is good at tig welding and pay him to make it for you. Its cheap labor and if you can find the right guy, it can be really good quality. Ive done it once or twice.

I have a friend who works at a design firm in Stead who can weld aluminnium very well. He will want some seat time in the sucker though.

As said, the frame would be heavy using steel. You'd have to go with pretty thin wall tubing to mitigate the weight. Alum is much lighter but will cost a lot more; it's more difficult/takes longer to weld and the tubing cost is higher than steel. It's also not as rigid as steel.

The design as drawn is pretty bulky; you might want to consider bolt-together sections, like a separate front & rear clip that bolts together or is hinged for fold-up, and uprights that will come off the base frame - to make storage a lot easier.

Since this thing is going to be basically a piece of furniture, why not construct it out of wood. Makes for probably a thicker frame construction and possibly some diagonal bracing, but in the end it would be cheaper, easier to build and probably look nicer. It would also make it easier to customize the seat attachment.

Nick, my Computer Science degree focused on Virtual Reality and computer animation... I'm not exactly "new" to 3D modeling:

http://www.seccs.org/members/sperry/...ges/road01.jpg
http://www.seccs.org/members/sperry/vecs/

http://www.seccs.org/members/sperry/...ty_400x303.jpg
http://www.seccs.org/members/sperry/hfly/

Anyway, the design would use like 1/16" thick 1" mild steel tube, so I'd be able to weld it as easily as possible. The table tops would be high-density laminated particle board.

I've been thinking about sleeving the main frame at the mid-point so the whole thing can be broken into two parts for transportation. But, I'm not sure it's necessary. With the table tops off (they'd be removable) and the seat removed, it's only 6'x2'x18"... not all that big. However, it will be heavy... hence the wheels to allow you to roll it around. But the weight is what makes it stable. I want this thing to be rock solid... the whole reason I'm building it is because I hate having a rolling desk chair and wobbly table for the wheel.

This will definitely give you front/back stability, but how much lateral do you want / need? I wander if some sort of outrigger on either side might be in order. Guess it depends on if you lean into the turns.

I think 18" wide should be pretty stable... that's as wide as my desk chair, and it's got a much higher center of gravity.

Yeah, Sketchup rawks! Best freeware I've ever used. Phenolic intake manifold spacer:

http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/197...espacerdj4.jpg

Yes it is very cool. I use it everyday. I love how you can get freehand effects on it.

Thats pretty. Too bad I don't have that program on my work computer.

Just put it on. It doesn't take up much space at all and you can get the free version before you decide to invest.

We have the pro version here, but for some reason I have the only computer without it. However, my computer is the only one here with Architectural Desktop on it.

.065" steel tubing is a good idea, but I dunno about using 1"x1" for the main frame rails. That's kind of flexy for that length. Maybe 1"wide x 2" tall... at least for the main rails? I also doubt it's going to be that heavy - 1" x 2" x .065" tubing is only 1.27 lbs/ft.

On a side note, this sketchup proggy is sweet!

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehou...d6136cf63d55b2

I think we might need a sketchup thread.

is that the new memorial for the twin towers or a cool cell phone?

I'll say....................I wish I could say I did this but I can't. Thought it was appropriate.

I'm curious... do you think that took the pro version to make (the sandbox)? It seems damn near impossible to create complex curved surfaces... look at the "crotch" of my building in sketchup... I had to manually triangulate the surface, it looks like ass.

Yes. The sandbox tools make the complex curves very easy. When I get a topographic survey from an engineer with all the contour lines set at elevation, I simply load those into sketchup-highlight them and use the sandbox tool. It automatically triangulates between all the contour lines to make the 3-D mesh. They did a similar thing in making the car by drawing the countours of the car and using the sandbox tool to triangulate between them.

Crap, sounds like I need a copy of the pro version... the arches in my last drawing took about 3/4 of the entire time spent on that model, and they look like crap. I had the control lines for the arches in about 10 minutes... but it took another 2 hours to figure out how to make them solid.

Bah, if you're going to bother with real, detailed solid modeling, learn a real program like SolidWorks or Pro-E. That's something you could actually put on your resume if you wanted.

http://files.solidworks.com/casestud.../ap_racing.jpg

Those pesky license costs can be avoided with a few scans through BitTorrent sites...

Yeah, thanks for pointin' that out, Cap'n Obvious! ;) But a single user license for Solidworks is about $4k, if'n ya wanna be legal and all. And it's like 2.8gig. It's on my resume but I'm not gonna spend $4k, nor do I have a machine that can handle it.

Naw, I just want something I can F around with. SolidWorks and Pro-E would just be frustrating since all I want to do is play.

I have almost zero Pro-E experience so I can't really tell you about it, but I've used SW daily for about 3 years now. It's actually not difficult to learn, especially if you just want to mess around.

I've found Sketch-up to be way more advanced in its abilities over many $4,000 programs. I have 3dVis and it sucks compared to sketchup. I use it everyday and it amazes me with every aspect of the program - ease of use, small file size, realtime modeling and no crashing.

As far as putting it on your resume. If I had to choose to hire someone with skills in solid works or sketch-up, for me, hands down it is the sketchup abilities I would want. Since it was purchased by Google, they have added ray tracing, several plug-ins as well as direct import / export to Google Earth.

The next version will surely add even more features.

What industry are you in?

Sorry should have clarified that - Architecture.

Obviously a higher level of engineering detail may or may not require another software. I have found that the accuracy we get out of the 3d model in sketchup exceeds Autocad. This is mainly due to eliminating drafter interpretations that often happen in 2d drawings.

I was just curious; I've never seen any engineering/solid modeling jobs calling for Sketchup experience. And yeah, AutoCAD sucks. I'm glad I don't have to use that clumsy POS anymore.