How To Create A 3D Guitar Body Part 1

[Music] hey guys it's chris from highland guitars and you're watching another episode of from the luthiers workbench this episode is going to be the first of a two-part series where I'm gonna let you follow along as I create a 3d full-size full-scale 3d rendering of a guitar body and I'm gonna be doing that using Adobe Illustrator and rhinoceros 3d and I'll be doing all the work on my iMac now the same software programs are also available for Windows PCs and they work pretty much the same and in this first episode I'm going to cover the initial stages of creating a 2d design using Adobe Illustrator and then in the next episode I will convert those 2d shapes into a full-sized full-scale 3d rendering so let's jump in and get started the first thing I'm gonna do is open up Adobe Illustrator and then I'm going to create a new document that's 48 by 36 inches that's large enough to incorporate an entire guitar body next I'll drag down a guide which I'll place right at the center of the document next I'm going to place a reference image in this case I'm using this nice little ibanez RG and then I will try to place that as close to that Center as possible now as you can see the guitar is not the actual correct size so what I'm going to do is I'm going to draw a line from right at the front of the nut all the way back to the front of the saddles on the bridge and that'll give me an idea of what the size of the image is and when I check my property panels I can see it's eleven point two seven three eight inches so what I'll do is I'll copy that dimension and I use a website so I'll call my browser and this website is proportionate err and what I'll do is I will paste in that original size with the eleven point two seven three eight then I'll type in the size I want which is twenty five point five inches and that shows me it needs to be 226 point one nine percent so I'll copy that I'll jump back into illustrator and then I will select these elements and then I will hit my scale tool and then in the uniform box I'll paste in that 226 point one nine and that enlarges the entire image to the correct size and if I want to check it I can just select that line I drew and I can see over here it's twenty five point five zero zero three so I'll delete the line and then I will cut the image and then fit the window and then paste it that places it right smack in the center of my document next thing I want to do is I want to reduce the opacity to about 20 percent because I don't want it to be full on 100% it makes it hard to see as I'm doing the drawing now I can take my pen tool and start to draw the perimeter shape of the guitar body and I do this really quickly here and once I have the initial drawing down I can start to drag out my handles for the Bezier curves to get the shape precisely what I want and it only takes a few minutes to do this but the objective is to keep the drawing simple as few points as possible but at the same time finesse it to get it as close to the reference image as possible and once I am happy with that the next step will be to create the neck and to design the website I'm going to call it by browser and I'm gonna go to a website called fret fine 2d and what this will do is allow me to design my fretboard online and I'll type in my scale length which is twenty five point five I'll leave the string with at the nut what it is the default measurement but I'm gonna has change the string with at the bridge to two point zero eight inches and then the overhang to 1.25 inches I'll leave that calculation method twelve it I'm not even sure what it does and for the number of frets even though I'm gonna use 24 frets I'm gonna add another fret to make it 25 and what that will do is it will add a line at the end which represents the end of the fretboard so then I can save this to my computer and I will just simply navigate out to the folder where I want to save all the parts for this design and then I'll save it next I can jump back into Adobe Illustrator and open up that fretboard and it comes up like this so I will select the entire fretboard and then I'm going to group it into one element and copy that and then what I'll do is I will jump back into my drawing and I will paste it next I can rotate it to the correct orientation and then I need to position it so what I'll do is I'll zoom in and I'm gonna take the center line that was created in that fretboard drawing and I will place that on the center reference mark that I put earlier and then I will move the strings right up to the front edge of the saddles and at that point I have my neck positioned and with the neck position I can start working on building my neck pocket and to do that I'll zoom in and I have to make sure that where the body intersects the perimeter I have anchor points that represent a start and finish the neck pocket so I'll either move those in to correct position and if necessary I can zoom in and add an anchor point where that body contour in intersects the perimeter of the neck contour now I'm gonna drag a guide between the 24th and 25th fret and that's gonna represent the end of the neck pocket because I want the fretboard to slightly overhang sort of like it does on a Stratocaster and then I'm going to draw the perimeter shape of the neck pocket you with the basic shape of the neck pocket complete what I'm gonna do is I'm going to select and hide the fretboard as well as my reference image that way I can just see the body in the neck pocket itself then what I have to do is I have to select the anchor point on that front neck pocket curve and I will copy it and then paste it right on top next I will select the body itself and I will hide that so now you can see the elements that form the neck pocket and then all I have to do is join that front curve with the rest of the pocket and that will complete the neck pocket shape and now I will unhide the fretboard and my reference image so I can continue on and the next step is going to be to draw my pickup pockets and to do that I am going to create a rectangular shape that is one point six to five inches wide and two point eight seven five inches tall next I'll create another rectangle right over the center of that one but this one is going to be 0.625 inches wide and 3.5 inches tall and as you can see we're getting the basic shape of that pickup pocket but what I need to do is round the corner so I'll start out by typing in a quarter of an inch radius which I think is a little bit too much so I'll back it off and I will type in 0.125 or 1/8 inch radius and I think that's better and then I will select that first box that I drew and do the same thing to the corners of of it I'll add that eighth inch radius then I will select the two boxes and a using Pathfinder I will combine them into one shape now I can hold down my option key and drag a copy and position it where the bridge pickup will be located and that pretty much completes the pickup design now I get to do the bridge positioning the bridge that I'm going to use for this guitar is a hip shot six strings so I'll visit their website where I can open up a PDF of the dimensions and I will save that to my computer in the folder where I'm keeping all those elements and then I go back to illustrator to my drawing and I will open up a new document for that PDF and once I have that open I can select a top view of the bridge copy it and then paste it into my drawing and at this point what I'll do is I will position the bridge right at the end of the scale length of the strings from my fretboard drawing and I can actually select the front of the saddles and position them exactly at the end of those strings and that is a precise positioning of the bridge now what I have to do is draw the holes for the bridge mount as well as the string through holes and to do all this I'm going to jump back out to this PDF and you can see that the mounting hole is 0.178 inches and the distance between those holes is 0.875 so I will select an ellipses tool and I will start with the middle mounting screw hole and I will type in 0.178 inches for height and width so the diameter will be 0.178 inches and then I will call up my preferences and I will change the keyboard increment to 0.875 that distance between the holes and then I will hold down my option key and press the up arrow and that will position the upper mounting hole and then I will do the same but with the down arrow to position the lower mounting screw now for the string through holes the size of those holes is 0.156 inches the distance apart is 0.416 and what I'm going to do is I'm going to draw these off of the actual reference image sort of out here in the open space to make it easier to see so I'll type in I'll drop my ellipses tool and type in point 1 5 6 inches and then I will change my preferences the keyboard increment to point 4 1 6 and then using option arrow down arrow key I'll just keep hitting the down arrow key until I have the number of holes that I need which of course is 6 since it's a 6 string guitar now what I'm going to do is I'm going to draw a rectangle from the center of the top hole to the bottom center of the lower hole and then I will select those and cut them next I will zoom into the bridge and I will paste those elements and I can grab that center of the rectangle and place it right over my Center guide and then what I have to do is move the holes so that they are in line with the screw holes and as you can see here the screw holes are actually the difference between the point 708 and point 4 8 4 dimensions so I'll bring up my calculator and I'll type in points 708 and subtract 0.484 and that gives me the difference which is 0.2 to 4 inches so I'll go back to the drawing call up my preferences and type in 0.224 in the keyboard increments then I'll hit my right arrow and that will position that those holes precisely and then I can get rid of that rectangle that I drew now at this point I'm gonna unlock my guides cuz I want to delete these these two guides here that aren't really use anymore and then I'll lock my remaining Center guy because that's something I'm always going to be referring to now the next step is to position my controls nobs for the pots and the switch that I'll be using and the pots that I'm going to use have a shaft of 0.3 1 to 5 inches in diameter so I will draw a hole for the volume pod and then what I'm going to do is draw a slightly larger half-inch diameter hole which will be for the 3-way toggle switch that I would use for this guitar then what I'm going to do is I'm going to copy these two items well first I'll position my volume pot where I want it then I'll copy these two and then paste it right in front then I'm gonna grab my rotate tool click it in the center of that switch hole and then I can rotate the copy around until I have a position where I want that way I can be assured that the hole for the tone knob is going to be the same distance from the switch as the volume and that's just for symmetrical purposes now I have my controls basically positioned so what I want to do now is create the elements for the control cavity and to do that I'm going to do an offset of 0.5 inches and what that will do is create an inner line of the body it's it's the same shape as a body it's just a half an inch in from that then I'll bring down a guide which will represent the top of that cavity and then I'm going to place an anchor where that guide intersects that inner line what I can do next is delete the parts of that line that I don't need and what I'm left with is that lower curve which represents that lower part of the control cavity so I'll finish it off and you can start to see how that shape is is taking form but what I want to do is I want to round the edges so I'll drag my radius mark in to create a nice round shape now this is actually going to represent the shape of my control cavity cover for the cavity itself I have to create another offset which will be 0.375 inches now you can kind of get an idea of how this is taking shape and what I want to do now is select my control holes that I created and position those right where I want them to be now I realize that the shape of this control cavity may not make a lot of sense right now but it will once I start to do the 3d rendering in the next episode what I'm ready to do now is I'm gonna hide my fretboard the reference image as well as the bridge drawing and that leaves me with just the body and the pickup cavities neck cavity and control cavity and what I'm gonna do is create a bounding box which encompasses the whole outer body shape and this will be used for positioning the body in the next step next I will select the elements and then copy them and then I'm going to create a new document and this document is going to be 14 by 18 inches 14 inches wide 18 inches tall and that represents the size of my guitar body blanks that I use now I'm going to create a box on this document that's 14 by 18 inches the same size as the blank now I can paste in those elements that I copied it for the body and I will rotate those to the correct orientation I'm gonna move those out of the way for the moment I'm selecting that Center bounding box and I'm going to place that exactly on the center of this document that way I know the body is perfectly centered on the blank and then just to kind of make things consistent I'll select all the elements make sure they're the same weight there should be no fills and I'll make sure that the strokes are all the same color black and then at this point I can save the document to my computer and that's what I'll be using when I go into Rhino to create the 3d shape so I'll I'll call this guitar body for 3d and then I'll save that into the folder where I'm saving all the elements for this project okay well that's all the time I have for this week's episode in the next episode I'm gonna take the 2d drawing that I created the guitar body for 3d and I'm going to import that into rhinoceros 3d and build my full-size full scale 3d model so until the next episode take care and we'll see you soon [Music]

Channel: Highline Guitars

Views: 15,885

Rating: 4.9622641 out of 5

Keywords: how to make a 3d guitar body, how to design a guitar, how to draw a guitar body, CAD guitar design, How to CNC a guitar body

Id: ST9_C0RIlcQ

Length: 18min 56sec (1136 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 17 2020