Create a winglet



Hi guys this is a 3D model of a winglet, but I don’t know ho to create it in my project. Can someone help me please ?

Image hasn’t uploaded and link doesn’t seem to work. Can you try direct upload using 7th icon (upward arrow) please?

This link should work…
https://forums.sketchup.com/uploads/short-url/yBaElL6zU1O73EDfYTrj2jpTmVU.jpeg

A small version of your image looks like this:

In principle, draw an aerofoil section in the green-blue plane. Push-pull it along the red (X) axis to the length of the first section. Scale the outer winglet face down to get the taper you want. Move the outer end face on the green axis if needed to get the angle of the front edge as you want. Then make it a component.

Repeat for the other sections, for the moment keeping the wing straight.

Then rotate each section to where you want it, rotating about the chord of the aerofoil at each end-of-section. Finally, open each section for editing, select the end face, and rotate it half the angle between sections, so the aerofoils at each end line up.

Here’s a quick example for three sections. Didn’t get the third one quite properly aligned and rotated, but you get the idea:


Winglet.skp (76.5 KB)

That should work.

I just used two arcs each for top and bottom of the aerofoil section, for speed of illustration. You probably want a better shape. Don’t use too many segments in your lines, however you draw them, if the model is not to get too large a file size.

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I’ll do as you said thanks!

Hi jhon i friend to follow your exemple in doping a winglet but it resultaste me too hard to understeand and do it. Cant you record a video how to procede ?..just a few minutes.

Later today or tonight. Sorry, busy during day.

J

Ok I’ll wait don’t worry. Maybe I’m gonna remember you to do it…

See how this looks. Made a couple of mistakes - but left them in to show I make them too!

Start with aerofoil as component. Open it. PushPull to length.

Scale the outer end aerofoil down (I used Scale about Centre (Ctrl or Option (on Mac) + S).

Copy the end face, close section 1 of winglet, then paste in place to start the second section.

PushPul section 2 to length. Scale the end down. Make it into a component.

Along the way, I noticed the extra lines after Pushpull, went in and hid them, accidentally hiding part of the surface first.

You could avoid the lines in the first place if you first use the plugin TIG Weld (from Sketchucation Plugin Store) to weld together all the boundary edges of the first aerofoil section you draw.

Then select Section 2, and use the Rotate tool to angle it up.

Orient the rotate tool to face you and hold it there with Shift key, to rotate about (in this case) the world Green axis.

Rotate - I chose 30 degrees here.

After this operation the aerofoils at the junction between sections 1 and 2 won’t align, so to get them to do so, open each section in turn, select the end face (using a left to right selection window so you just get the surface and edges enclosed by the window, line up the rotation axis and hold it with Shift, and then rotate it by half the angle between the sections - so half of 30, or 15 degrees.

Done.

Repeat for subsequent sections until done.

You can modify the Scale operation. If you want to keep the front edge straight, don’t use Scale about Centre, but do an operation to scale just along the green axis, about opposite edge. That will scale the length of the aerofoil. Then do a matching scale about centre along the blue axis.

If you want something in between, use the Move tool on the outer aerofoil, and press Alt to allow the wing surface to Autofold.

Hope that’s enough to get you going again.

One of the things that I love most about SketchUp is that there are so many ways to skin the same cat :scream_cat:

I used Push/Pull with the modifier key (to create new surfaces), then scale with modifier key (to scale around the middle), then rotate with left arrow key (to lock to the red axis):

More time could be taken with both Rotate and Scale to get more accurate final geometry, as well as making additional sections with Push/Pull to get smoother final geometry.

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What about a winglet like this?

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@TheOnlyAaron: I would bet that you can convert this to a nice SubD example :wink:

hmmm…

If you jump to about 3:00…

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Thanks a lot all of you never though you could help me in this watch thanks thanks and thanks !!

HI DaveR, I need exactly what you described here (a rounded winglet). There is a taper towards the wingtip as well and I am battling with trying to get the winglet to round upwards using the follow me tool, can you please share you you did this?

Follow Me wouldn’t be the right tool for the job. I used Fredo’s Curviloft to do it.

You can use follow me, then use scale to shape it.
wing
P.S. You need to explode the curve in order to scale the wing properly.

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Hi DaveR, Forestr

Thanks for your replies. I played around a bit and based on what you wrote here I created a solution that goes half way to solving my problem. It actually looks quite good.

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Here is another view of the same…

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