Tutorial: How to model a BBS LM wheel in Solidworks and show design intent.

Hi guys!

So, today, I thought it would be a good day to make a little tutorial about my process of modeling a wheel in Solidworks. Please read this last phrase again.

It is MY process. I can't promise this is the modeling process a professional would use. It has worked well for me, however some guy more experienced may cringe a bit after seeing how I give it a go.

Anyway, what I pretend to model is a BBS LM wheel. I won't be using this model for production purposes or strenght calculations. This will be a model suited for renders, so I will only model the surfaces that will be seen in my renders. I won't model all the details in the back side of the wheel, simply because I will not need to render close shots of it's back side. Nevertheless, I don't want to model a BBS LM replica or a BBS LM look-a-like. I WANT to make it as close to the real thing as I can get it. Yeah I could make some sh**ty wheel, name it BBS LM and still have some guys say it was "perfect". But it wouldn't be.

So all this process starts with the search for blueprints and technical drawings from BBS. And since I am trying to replicate a product that already exists, I should search for some reference images too. Needless to say I didn't find blueprints for the BBS LM wheel. So I made my own. How? Well, that would be another tutorial, but it started with a lot of reference images. They are not perfect though. In fact if you spot some major errors in these blueprints, I would actually appreciate if you pointed it out.

You can find all the reference images and blueprints to follow along this tutorial in a folder called "bbs_lm_tutorial_references.rar".

The model this tutorial will result in is here:
BBS LM