I've got a buddy who's working on a project with a vendor, and he's in need of a CAD rendering of the top/structural supports of the top of a 2nd/3rd gen (I'm thinking probably 3rd gen, but didn't want to limit the question to that). I'm absolutely ignorant to this kind of stuff at this point, so I apologize if this is a really dumb question. Has anyone done this, or does anyone know how to go about obtaining this? Thank you in advance for any help.

 

I've looked into it at one point CAD drawings are something very difficult to get. The best you might find is a visual representation that someone did. But not likely an accurate geometry of the car that BMW MINI would not publicize. It's rare when a car manufacturer would provide such proprietary information. And I would not trust any models made by someone (for visual purposes) to be accurate at all.

If it's for visual purposes you might get lucky on some site like grab CAD.
If it's for real work, you might have to figure out other ways to get the geometry in CAD. There are places that could do a hand scan. Sometime universities have such tools.

Good luck...

 

I have seen three types of 3D CAD modeling scanners used in my work, Hand held, tripod mounted, and rotating platform. They range in prices from a few hundred to many thousands ... and there are many 3D scanning services out there.

We have had to scan a number of things in my office, I have only used a handheld unit for some complex modeling solutions. But for the MINI roof, I would think that could be done with a hand held.

Question is do you need a blank stripped to metal measurement or the built up, painted and trimmed model.

...there might be some pre-scanned models out in open source but I would want to verify them, they may have been approximations used for game/simulation modeling.

Best of luck.

Motor On!