​I'm starting a series of models, all involving commercial airline aircraft.  Starting off is the Canadair Regional Jet (CRJ) 700-series, known as the CRJ-700.

 This is a project I started almost a year ago, but which soon stalled.  I'm back to actively working on recreating one of the paintings in the series, ​Piazzo San Marco​, by the artist Giovanni Antonio Canal.

In anticipation of Easter, I thought a little frivolity was in order.  

 I have been experimenting with the SwiftBlock addons that simplify the process of taking a mesh in Blender and defining that mesh in OpenFOAM.  There are two versions and both are about at the same level of development.  While they both work as advertised, I have come to the conclusion that neither will be appropriate for complex models.  It was at this point, the little voice in the back of my head said, 'Of course, dummy!  A wise man once said, "Always use the right tool for the job!"' (That little voice loves to quote himself!)  While Blender is great for visualizing the results of numerical analysis, it was not made for creating the meshes used in said numerical analysis.  Luckily, I found something that is the right tool for the job...

 I finally made the plunge and contributed an answer to Blender's StackExchange.  It easier (and less scary) than I thought!

This is a permanent post--I will update it occasionally.  Some aspects of being an artist, and improving as an artist are difficult: it requires skill, creativity, passion and vision.  Progress generally involve hard work and there are seldom short-cuts.  But other aspects are primarily a matter of organization and discipline.  If you reduce your 'wasted' time, you'll have more time to devote to the time-intensive activities.  The list below is where I usually find myself wasting time, causing a 2-hour project to turn into a 2-day project.

There is a reason I keep putting off the task of cleaning up most of my 'old' models--those projects that I tinkered with for a while before moving on to the next shiny thing:  they are a mess!  But getting this house model to a level where I can display it takes me one step closer to cleaning out my junk! 

 My first few attempts at uploading models to SketchFab were not overwhelming successes.  There is not a one-to-one correlation between what a model looks like in Blender, especially rendered in cycles, and what it will look like in SketchFab.  Like most things, it's a matter of understanding how to prepare the model in Blender to make the transition as easy as possible.  This category of my blog chronicles the baby steps I'm taking. :)

Quick Update 

 I thought I was going to delve into SwiftBlock and understand the mysteries of setting curved edges.........not so much.  Those mysteries still elude me.  But, I got edge grading to work, so it wasn't a complete loss! :)

The Short Version... 

I've attempted to get started with OpenFOAM before.  I generally get bored with the building-block approach to learning it, jump in too deep and quickly get discouraged.  I added an OpenFOAM category to this blog in an attempt to motivate me to take smaller steps and to remain committed for a bit longer.