[dataway]

I got the rim profile from pictures of a Rally II rim, guesstimated the spoke geometry from a photo. So yes ... superimposed the image to get the rim profile, CAD sketched the spoke geometry.

The difficult part is the stamping in between the spokes ... it's not "planar", some areas higher or lower than others ... as you might expect from a stamped or "drawn" part.

Anything is possible with this kind of software ... but I don't know a lot of the "best practices" involved so it's easy to do something that sabotages something you need to do later.

When it comes to modeling my background is mostly in free form products like 3ds Max (used for animation (like Toy Story) movie special effects etc.) with that kind of software there are far less "rules" because it's not meant to manufactured or "real" just meant to look real. Might have to approach it from that direction ... luckily that software will output the necessary formats for 3d printing also.