Freeship plywood panels

[Deering]

I'm just getting familiar with Freeship - nice package.

My goal is to design a chine hull for pywood construction. Once the hull development is complete, how do I create a cutting pattern or offsets for cutting out of flat sheet stock? Is Freeship the right tool to do that step, or do I need to export to another software package?

Thanks in advance.

[Tad]

Deering,

Freeship seems to be a great program for creating chined hulls and developing the plates. Martijn is to be congradulated.

In the "tools" menu find "develop plates", this opens a new window with your unrolled surfaces. From this you can plot, export, zoom, etcetera.

A couple of things to do before hand:

Make sure each plate, (i.e. centerline to chine, or chine to sheer) is in a separate layer, then when unrolled they will be separate plates.

And make sure “developable” is turned on for each layer in the layer properties


Good luck, Tad

[Deering]

Perfect! That was just what I needed! Thank you!

I hadn't turned on the developable switch in layers so wasn't seeing the plate option in the menu. Now I just have to figure out how to put separate plates on separate layers...

Thanks again!

[Tad]

Getting each surface in it's own layer after drawing should be possible? Perhaps by selecting all edges? Don't know and I haven't been able to do it yet.

The way I found to do it is just make one surface (bottom) in the first layer. Then turn on the next layer and extrude the upper edge of the first plate to make the next surface or panel. Then you can wiggle the points about to get the correct shape. And thus up the hull with as many plates and chines as you want.

Tad

[Raggi_Thor]

I suggest you use IntelliCAD to work on the flat patterns. It's a low cost AutoCAD clone. Most cutting shops using cnc routers or lasers will expect dwg- or dxf files.

[Tad]

The developed panels can be exported directly from Freeship as dxf files.

[Raggi_Thor]

yes, but wouldn't you need to devide them into parts that fit on your sheets, and place the marts to minimize waste?

[Deering]

I can set up my layout manually to maximize sheet stock usage since I'm not using CNC. Freeship appears to let you adjust the location/orientation of each developed plate.

Haven't figured it all out yet, but it looks like Freeship will automatically develop each face separately even if it isn't in a separate layer. Am I mistaken on that?

[CET]

If you don't create seperate "layers" for each developable surface, FREEship will not unroll them seperately. To assign a face to it's own layer, first create an empty layer. Then select (highlight) the surface(s) you want assigned to that layer, drop down the layers dropdown menu and select the empty layer you created. Then unselect the faces you highlighted earlier. They will now be assigned to that layer. Hope this helps.

PS - don't forget to check the "developable" box in the layer properties before developing your plates.

[Deering]

Well, it seems to be unrolling them separately even when they're all on the same layer. I "develop plates" and get separate plates for each face component, port & SB.

I have a crease edge between each face so maybe that enables Freeship to see the separate faces as individual components? I'm using 2.0.

Thanks very much for your assistance!

[CET]

You may be right about the creased edge...