Designing a Lotus 7 replica using Inventor 2011 Frame Generator

by Clint Brown

I was visited by a mate last night who has been working on building a Lotus 7 replica for a few years and had a few questions about the strength of his frame. He had with him some old drawings that were drawn up on a drawing board in the late 70's and the challenge pretty much was to look at getting a model into Inventor, and to then look at an FEA on the frame. This is obviously going to be a bit of a longer term project, but for now, I have modelled up the basic frame, using Inventor's Frame generator, and started on the aluminium skin and the nose cone.

Original drawings based on Colin Chapman's design which is over 50 years old, but still very popular!
 

This is the basic frame, there is still a lot of work to do, as I need to still add in the front and rear suspension and steering etc. 

The skin is a multi-bodied solid which I have split into the relevant pieces and then shelled out, I will be converting these to sheet metal components, with flat patterns etc.

3 hours and a lot of coffee later, I decided to call it quits around midnight, watch this space for more on the progression of the design. Ideally I want to have a fully functioning car, with an FEA on the frame and some nice visualisations in Showcase!