Wednesday 3 September 2008

Basic Car Designing

Let's move on to cars. A car is probably easier to make than an airplane or boat, because it does not need to be balanced, as it is going to move on the ground, not through the air or the water. You want to get a good number for the brakes; not too low, not too high. For the emergency or handbrakes (if you decide to add them), you can set a high number.
Try experimenting with the handling; if you want your car to perform hairpin turns, then you might want to try a handling system that enables the axels to turn a lot. Just watch your speed when you're turning, especially, if your car is tall. Otherwise, you'll roll over when you turn at high speeds. You can try tweaking the speed with which the axels will turn. At the Val section in the RigidChips Designer, you can set the default step. This is the step for the axels when they are returning to their normal position (straight). You can set the step for the axels as you turn them to be higher or lower than this so-called "return step."
Be realistic with your engine power; you don't need it to be set at 1,000,000 (unless you're designing a very heavily armored tank-like vehicle.
With some practice, you'll be designing cars that perform well!