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Hey Jogger, the sketch up you made is too aggressive in its slope. You'll end up creating a lot of unintended drag with it. It doesn't make sense intuition wise, but if you raise the back part above the tailgate by 10 inches or so, making a 1 ft tall back "window" area, it will make it more efficient by keeping closer to the aerodynamic template. It also makes for more usable cargo room. I plan on making my Gen II cap as well starting mid June. It will be very functional as a cap, as well as optimized for aerodynamics.
I use the draw function in MS Word to design my stuff. I get a side view of what I want, and then figure out the heights using the "Properties" of the object and scaling everything. It takes a bit of time, but I understand it and was able to get a full size print out of my rib designs to use as templates which was only off by 1/16" over 63". Close enough for me! These aren't space shuttle parts! Anyway, in Draw you can very accurately trace a photograph and come up with the shape of rib 1 (the very front of the cap) by tracing the shape of the rear of the cab. My trick is to use the "Freeform" shape tool, then right click the shape you make, then select "Edit Points" Here magic can happen when you make a corner point and manipulate the "Whiskers" you can match a curve perfectly by playing with them, I try to keep the number of points at a minimum. I have been meaning to create a "How to" guide to follow cause it works so dern good for me. If you’re interested, give it a try. Insert a picture into a Word doc, then "Insert Shape" and select FreeForm, just hit the corners with one click of what you want to trace and make it a closed shape. Then do the right click, edit points, right click point, corner point...manipulate whisker. Play with it, when you right click points you can delete them, when you're in edit point mode, you can add points by simply grabbing a line anywhere and dragging it a little bit. The program may screw things up shape wise when you add points & such, so you need to adjust things quite a bit when roughing them in, but once you have it close, you can make small adjustments to really make things line up. Hope this helps.
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