Here's a very simple, very quick and easy aircraft canopy that anyone should be able to create.

1) Drag a cube onto the grid and give it the overall shape that you want your canopy to have. "First object on left in the picture below". I did this by scaling the top and front faces until the overall shape was acceptable.

2) Now after Optimizing and Solidifying the object, Clone it once.

3) Select and Extrude ALL faces of the cloned cube to these values; Extrude = 0.2  Bevel = 0.0(Uncheck the "Extrude as Region" option), and you will get the bottom center object in the picture.

4) Center the extruded cloned cube in the exact same position as the original cube.

5) Next scale the extruded cloned cube down by 0.95 on X, Y, & Z axis. Repeat this as many times as you like until the canopy frame is the thickness that you want.

6) Perform a Boolean Subtraction using the extruded cloned cube as the subtractor(subtract clone from original). Now you have a nice open canopy frame.

7) Using the "Create a Face" script, create a four(4) pointed face, and give it a semi-transparent material or texture. Clone as many of these faces as you need to fill all but the bottom opening in the canopy frame.

8) Shape these faces by scaling the edges to the required shape for glass panes to fit the frame, and put them in place. Group all the faces to the frame.

You should now have a very simple and nice aircraft canopy.

For a more contoured canopy read David Bollingers excellent aircraft canopy tutorial.

Enjoy!!  ;D

Great way to make a frame,thanks, Les!

Hello Les,
 Is there no way to select the extruded face and duplicate it? I'm looking for an easier more accurate way to create the window. [ yes, I know, I'm lazy]
 This really opened up a lot of possibilities, thanks, KB.

Well, the "create triangle" seems to work pretty good for this.
 KB

KB,
Sorry I haven't answered sooner. Major computer problems again.

You can always copy and paste any or all of the faces that you need, do the subtraction, then place the extra faces you have into the frame, and give them the glass look. Would be about the same only with less scaling of the window faces.

Les