--Design--

My personal favorite is big bulky space freighters, and a little NASA mixed in.
But you can model any style you want, this is just a tutorial to show you
"My Way" of making ships. Enjoy.
 

--Starting--

Now we will start to model, this model is a small space station (quite small); perfect to exercise
your spacecraft modeling skills. Now let's start!

 First, let's draw the basic outline <as shown in pic1> make sure the splines are set to "Peak"

 

Now select and copy the splines, and then paste, and flip on the X axis (pic2)

Now we have the basic outline, you may want to straighten you splines out a bit
if they are a bit crooked. The next step is extrusion, select the entire shape, then
use the extrusion button to extrude five times left (in left view, see pic3).

Notice I have scaled some of the sections down, do this also.
Now select the top splines (As you see from pic3, the first line on the top)
and extrude those UP about one inch. Then scale the section down to
89.40 on all axes. Now we will add some panels, select the middle
THREE sections on the side of the ship, and extrude ( do this from left few
with the right side hidden). Repeat on the right side. You should
have what is pictured in "Pic4" now.

Now, select this, and copy, then paste three times with a space of half an inch per section.
Also, make sure to flip on the Z Axis Every *OTHER* section. The results are in Pic5

Now we have one section of the ship, clone all of these and paste right beside
this one, with a space of an inch. Then paste another part, and rotate
it till it's horizontal (from top view) and scale it to: X: 50.44  Y: 100.00
Z: 50.94  (If this is not correct looking, change this to what you think
looks like a pipe length.)

Now let's close off the ends of the station, by importing a block
off the A:M CD-ROM. (Found under: Models/Primitives)
Scale it to the right size, and copy it placing it on all holes. now we have
around half the small space station complete, see Pic7

Now we have got some work done.. . take a minutes brake
and eat and drink (Christian Makes a homemade burrito,
and gets a can of diet coke) mmm... yum-yum. The first
rule of making spaceships: After finishing half the ship,
celebrate with fattening food, and a caffienated drink =)
If you can't make my homemade burritos, here's how:
Take a soft tortilla, Don't even cook it. Then take
lots of lettuce and put it in the middle, then take  some salsa
 (a big glob!) and put it over the lettuce, now take some
shredded cheese (I prefer, Kroger's Fancy Shredded 4-Cheeese
Mexican) over the salsa, then wrap up your burrito and dig in!

Now that we have got out stomach's full, let's continue. We shall add some
solar pannels to it now, import a TUBE off the A:M Cd (Under: Models/Primitves)
and rotate it till it's horizontal like the connector, then scale it to whatever
ever length you want, and add it on the right side. Now select half of the pipe
and extude down, and then, UP (This is done from the top view), and then one up then you
will have a solar pannel. Then add one to the other side by cloning the first one. If you want
you can make one bigger and longer than the other, as I did.

Now let's render and see what we've got:

Well, thats how too model a very small and simple space station.
You can use these techniques to make bigger ones, giant
ones... hope this taught you something!
 

-Christain Cox
Would like to thank:
Diet Coke (For When I ran out of Dr. Pepper)
HomeMade Burritos
MH3D v.5 for not crashing.
Adobe Photoshop (Even though I had to restart it everytime I captured a screen shot)
Steve Sappington
and all the folks at hash, inc.