Hi Doug,
Quote:
Originally Posted by drmiller100
the greenhouse is BEHIND the front fenders
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The frontal area is everything that you can see from the front when your eyes are level with it, so it even includes the portion of the rear wheel below the belly. Think of it this way: take a laser beam set up so it is perfectly level in front of the car. If you put a panel behind the car and used the laser to trace a precise outline of the car all the way around onto the panel -- that profile would be the frontal area.
It includes the fenders and hood, the greenhouse that is above the hood, the side mirrors (if they protrude outward and can be seen from the front) and the tires and suspension and exhaust or anything that protrudes and forms part of this frontal profile.
Here's a polyline trace that I did of the Aptera -- the rendering on the left should have the rear wheel traced, but is not visible; while the photo on the right is made with a long lens and is more accurate (even though I had to estimate the lower piece of the tire):
The hatched grid on the polyline outline are 1 foot squares, by the way, so they give an idea of the scale of the various parts. DataCAD can precisely measure the area of the polyline outline. (It also can measure the perimeter, etc.)