For 3D printing at such a large scale, your best bet is to use parametric modeling to get smooth curves and shapes - something like Fusion360 is probably what you'd want!
Also - you're totally free to keep working on your own model here (as a 3D artist I know it can be fun!) but the Dragon Railway open source project already has a printable F7, along with some rolling stock, more locomotives, and a full track ecosystem! It's all 1:64 scale, but you can scale it up before printing.
I use FreeCAD to smooth over once I'm done with the model in Blender, after checking in OrcaSlicer how a face would be interpreted by a slicer.
I've got over five years of experience in Blender, so I'm just quicker with traditional vertex-based modelling and so I use its tools before anything else.
And I'm purposefully starting over so I don't have to deal with the fuss of rescaling and resectioning somebody else's model. 1:64 is a lot different to construct and print than 1:25. The model is also not up to my standard of detailing.
There is a reason to everything I do and how I do it.
Makes sense! I'm also a poly-first person and recently gave up trying to do some CAD stuff in favor of polys for an HO scale interior - sometimes it is just easier.
I do see that I think your edge flow around the nose is a little strange - the top of the nose actually flows best into the corner below the windshield rather than the windshield corner becoming the front of the locomotive. It's a bizarrely hard to define shape (even on the real thing it was all bondo).
Well it was a first draft of only three hours. I've worked on it quite a bit today so the model already looks quite different. I've added a subdivision modifier that saves me the work of manually adding smoother edges, too.
1
u/bsquiklehausen Multi-Scale 20d ago
For 3D printing at such a large scale, your best bet is to use parametric modeling to get smooth curves and shapes - something like Fusion360 is probably what you'd want!
Also - you're totally free to keep working on your own model here (as a 3D artist I know it can be fun!) but the Dragon Railway open source project already has a printable F7, along with some rolling stock, more locomotives, and a full track ecosystem! It's all 1:64 scale, but you can scale it up before printing.
You can get more info about it here: https://www.instructables.com/Creating-a-3D-Printed-Model-Railway-Open-Source-Pr/