I'm in the process of restoring an old suzuki gsx600, it came completely in peices and without front fairings or bodywork. I generally don't like the look of the fairings on the front of your general 'crotch rocket', so I was glad to have the opportunity to design my own that hang back and hug the engine and chassis. My general approuch to this build is:

-design some new fairing in solidworks out of suraces.

-export those as .stl so I can load them in pepakura (pepakura takes 3d models and flattens them out so you can print them and then re-assemble in meatspace, a poor mans prototyping)

-print out on cardstock, reassemble

-test fit, if it looks good, onward! If not, redesign.

-Once everything is good reinforce with fiberglass and make a mold.

-make actual fairings with fiberglass/carbon fiber, whatever the budget allows.

Two days in and I am still stuck on design. I could go with a general curvy aerodynamic surface, but thats WAY too easy. No I have to choose a design that will make me waste hours figuring out how to make it . Instead of curves and such I want this to be made of hexagons, kind of like this hexagonal surface, but less complex:

I basically want to design my surface with the basic shape and then convert it to look like that ^ . It can't be curvy though, I want all those hexagons to be flat. My first approach was to make the surface and then project a sketch of my hexagonal pattern on to it, then somehow see if there was a way to convert the curved sketch lines to be straight. Then use 'Filled Surface' to fill in the individual hexagons. That failed, projected curves don't like more than one open or closed sketch, and I am not patient enough to ad every single one by hand.

So, thoughts? Suggestions? Much appreciated.