During my free time at work (and to practice my modeling skills) I started mocking up a wooden roller coaster in CATIA V5. I'll try to attempt curves and hills next. Then maybe I'll tackle a B&M coaster.

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That's actually not too bad. I like it. I think a B&M would be nice to see too!

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-Coaster Credit- 32

Looks good. I also did something like that in AutoCAD. I don't know what CATIA is, but I assume that it's a computer aided drawing program similar to AutoCAD. It's fun to to these kinds of things using computer programs.

I came up with the idea to model Goliath at SFOG in my architecture class last year using AutoCAD. never finished it, and probably won't ever finish it.

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Yeah, it's similar to AutoCad but you can do a lot more with it, but the extra features also makes it much more expensive.

Drop under construction.

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Not bad, the only thing is the harnesses are a bit off. Also, Amnesiac, great work so far on that woodie.

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-Coaster Credit- 32

Here are some more pictures from my wood coaster model including some stress analysis I was playing around with today. Enjoy!

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More progress on the Catia wooden roller coaster. I basically started over from scratch. I cam up with a faster way of creating the track and supports by using power copies. The hills are just circles so they look a little weird but I'm still in the learning and experimentation mode. Still, I've come a long way in a very short amount of time. By the way, does anybody happen to know that actual dimensions of the pieces of wood on a wood coaster? I have just been guessing and going with whatever looks right.

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Wow that looks incredible, would you say it's easy to do? Never mastered 3D design before...

If I'm not mistaken, alot of the pieces of wood are 2X6's. The handrails are 2X4's. It looks like most of the uprights are 4X4's. I think that the ledgers(the pieces at the top of each bent that the track is directly connected to) are 2X12's. Rivens(horizontal pieces used to connect the bents) are 2X6's. The track is 8 layers of 2X12's.

Here are some rough sketches of the bents.

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I wouldn't necessary say that it is hard, it is more about tie consuming, although these scetions didn't take me that long to do because you bascially only have to create everything once and then you just mirror, pattern, or copy everything else.

I started modeling a steel roller coaster. Orginally intended to be a B&M, it somehow turned into an Arrow/Vekoma style. I am also working on a waterslide which I will post pictures of later.

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You all should considering making CS for RCT3

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New steel and wood coaster model pictures. You can view more on my blog. Enjoy!

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I have upload the 3D coaster models into a 3D xml player so you can now play with the models yourself. I tried posting them in the forum but it didn't work so for now you'll have to go here.

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