Wicked Twister Model CATIA Tutorial

If you are a frequent visitor to Coaster101, you may have seen some of my CATIA amusement park ride computer models, like this. You may also have been asking yourself or wondering how I created those computer models. Well today I am going to explain in a little bit further detail on the process I have used to recreate those attractions on the computer.

I use a program called CATIA (Computer Aided Three-dimensional Interactive Application), which is the most powerful and widely used CAD (computer aided design) software of its kind in the world.

If you’ve ever used No Limits simulator there is an excellent Wicked Twister recreation so I am going to use that to help me out. Keep in mind that this is just one approach of literally thousands of different ways of doing it. If you have a other suggestions I would love to hear them!


The first thing I did was get the coordinates from all of the node points in the No Limits model. I created all of these points in a CATIA part. Be careful of the axis system, CATIA’s default axis is not necessarily the same as No Limits in terms of which direction is X, Y, or Z is. Next, connect all of the points with the spline command. This is the result thus far. You can see the basic profile layout, also called the center or heartline of the coaster.

Continue reading my article over at Coaster101.