Making airplanes with Metasequoia is not that hard. You just need to know how to start. I hope this page and the planned next pages can help. 

I wanted to make a model of another low aspect ratio proposal I sketched in my sketch-book. I always draw on paper with rectangles. I use 1 rectangle as 20 by 20 cm. It makes it easy to sketch and I found out that this technique can be used in Metasequoia too.

When you start the program, you will see that you have a angled view in some kind of mesh. This mesh is your help to translate the sketch from paper to be transformed to a 3D-model.

First you need to adjust the mesh a bit.  Select: VIEW - GRID It would be helpful if it too has a dimension of 20 by 20. Place 20 in INTERVAL. Ok, that is the start. You see here too that the axis have each a color. Red for X, green for Y and blue for Z. Try to keep those colors in your mind... or just note them down. Might be usefull later. Click OK and you see that the mesh became smaller. If you now push F2, you get a view straight on the mesh. We use this plan to generate our sideview. OK, I know, many will say "hey, that is not right". Indeed! Normally this should be the topview. But, trust me. We will get it right later. We will end in a model that can be used in FMS (Flying Model Simulator).

Now we first need to draw the rib at the root (center of wing). You can do it easy by first making a "rectangle" and later cut it into pieces and pull-and-drag the points of each part to the place it has to have. OK, lets make that rectangle. CREATE and select BOTH and FACE. Why? Well, both makes that the program sees both sides of this surface you are about to draw as a surface that needs a color. Just experiment later a bit that the difference is when you select front or back. Face stands for something with 4 point, tri needs three points to generate a surface and line only needs two points of course.

Just place the four points of the "square" you used on paper to sketch the airfoil into.

Select RECT and drag a square over the entire surface. You see that the lines get a green color. They are selected!

Now cut them in parts. Use KNIFE, click when you want to start your knife-line and click where you want it to end. Each line you create this way cuts the surface and generates a pair of extra points. YOU DON'T NEED TO GENERATE ALL THE COORDINATES OF THE RIB! Just make that you will see a good impression of the airfoil. That is all. About 5 cuts always does the thing.

Now comes the airfoil-creating part. Select MOVE at the left. Click on the point you want to move and drag it to the place you want to give it. Green colored points are the ones you have selected.

	Click the purple icon and drag your mouse. You get a perspective view.	Now you see that the rib drawn is placed on the mesh. Each point you draw in "the open air" gets on this mesh...as long as you didn't click on another point that doesn't lay on this mesh. OK, why do you want to do this now, this rotating. Just to get a better view to see the right placing of the wingtip-rib.

At the right you see the objects-panel. The only object shown is the airfoil you just drew. You can give it another name by double clicking on this name obj1. You now open its properties. But before you do this, do click on the eye. Just for fun. What did happen? You can correct it by clicking it again. This function will become handy later on.

OK, this window can do a lot. But you only need to rename the object at this point. Later you will see more of this window. Click OK and it is done.

To create the next rib at the end of the wing, you can do the same as you did above and move it later at the new place. Or ... you can be lazy (like me) and clone the first airfoil and have it placed at the right place at once. You see that I rename the first rib to "rib-center". Now, I select this object and click CLONE. The new window makes it possible to place the clone at a specific place. My airplanes real span (full-scale) is 4m. So I take 2m or 200 cm as the displacement of the clone rib. Which way? Y! Click OK and it is done. Easy, he.

Just rename the cloned object to "rib-end" and create with NEW a object you name "covering". You will use it for all parts which are needed to make the surface of the wing.

The drawing let you see the two ribs you already have. Don't see them? Just use the looking-glass, green cross-arrows and purple ball-arrows to see what you created. Experiment a bit to get a good view on both ribs. Now, CREATE and select again BOTH and FACE. Click at the four points you need to fill a part of the surface of the wing. I made the screenshot after making a single wing-surface-part. You will need to go all the way around. The trailing-edge is a bit tricky, but after some practice you get it. If you missed or clicked a wrong point ... UNDO. End-result.

Now, open the properties window of the covering by double-clicking the object covering. Select in the part "mirroring" SEPARATED and only select Y. Go see the result.

You see that the wing now is complete. Left and right part of the wing are visible. Only one part of the wing has visible point and lines. You cannot change the points of the mirrored part without changing the original part.

You see now the result of me making the second part of the airplane, the Junkers-flap. I didn't remake the airfoil. I just cloned the ribs and used SCALE to get it smaller. I even used a SCALE to get the bolt-part of the airfoil at the bottom. How did I do that? Easy. SCALE and place -1 in the Y. Don't forget to deselect "PROPORTIONALLY"! You see that the rib at the center is not on the mesh. I placed it a bit higher. How done? Easy. Select the rib that was on the mesh and use MOVE. Put 5 in the Y. Be sure to see if you are on the REL part of MOVE. Click OK, done. You might ask "how only select the rib-center of the flap?". Easy. Use the EYE in the object-manager to make the other object disappear. Now you can select that rib alone.

Time for some colors! Colors are named materials here. Open the MATERIAL PANEL. Make it yourself easy by dragging that panel to the right, just under the object panel.

Click NEW.

Double click "mat1". You opened its properties. Give it a name and choose a color.

But ... I don't want to have a complete yellow wing. There is a part that is transparent! Let me first make the top glazing of the cockpit visible. I need to KNIFE the wing. But ... in the top-view of the wing I cannot see the mesh to guide me. OK, lets use a trick. Lets rotate the covering onto the mesh.

Select ONLY the covering and use ROTATE. IMPORTANT: place a zero at each axis. It will prevent mistakes later. Look around which axis you will rotate. Here it is the red one. OK, it is 90 or -90. Experiment.

Once you rotate in onto the mesh, you can easily use the mesk to guide you while you KNIFE. I intend a cockpit with a width of 60 cm. So ... at 30 cm KNIFE.

Use a perspective view to better see how you need to rotate to get the covering back on its place.

You now need to make the glass-material. So, go to the material-panel and use NEW. Double click it and make it look a bit like this. It is only a guide!

The next part can be tricky. If you simply select with the rectangle select some part of your wing, you select also the points at its back. But ... the glazing of the top will not be the same as the glazing of the bottom of the wing. You can prevent this by pushing FR. Now you only select front-points.

How do you work to give the wing its yellow color and making the glass at the right place? First you select the ENTIRE wing (no FR-function!) and select the yellow material. Go to SELECTED and select SET MATERIAL TO FACES. The wing is now completely yellow. Now the glass-parts. First I did a extra KNIFE to get the rear-line of the glazing right. If there is no points at the place you need them, you need to generate them. KNIFE is in most cases a easy solution.  Now, you select FR and select with ROPE a part of the wing that should become glass. Select glass in the material-panel and do the same as above.

Here you see the result so far. See the extra KNIFE? The flap is not done yet. But doing it entirely in yellow is a piece of cake.

Now the fuselage. I made a LINE, but I did not draw the points at the start and the end. Why? They are already there in the wingpoints. If I did draw those points in this view, the next points will not be placed at the mesh, but on the same height as the wingtip. Just try it to see the mistake. Undo is a easy and handy tool!

I selected the line and cloned it at 30 cm from the mesh. This is all you need to draw a simple fuselage. Next step is making the surface of the fuselage.

First I drew the glass parts. Just select the glass-material and CREATE using BOTH and FACE. Click like you did to create the wing-covering. Now use TRI to create that first triangle. Don't forget to select the yellow material first! Now it becomes a combination of rectangles and triangles. So select what you need.

The result so far.

Tip: don't forget to create new object from time to time. It makes it easy to make parts invisible. If you don't select another object, all what you draw is in the current object.

part 2 part 3

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