Printing Plates - Freeship

Hi All

As a complete newbie to boat design and this forum please be kind and forgive me if this is a topic that has already been covered.

I have completed a very simple design in Freeship that includes Braces/Bulkheads at regular intervals and what I would like to do is print the plates for the braces so that I can use the print outs as templates to mark out the timber ready for cutting.

The challenge is that the plates show the braces as full width of the boat and to share the plates with a printing firm I need to 'print to pdf'. This is fine except the largest paper size I can select is Architect E and this is smaller than the dimensions of the largest brace.

So my question is does Freeship scale the plate down to fit onto Architect E and if so what scale does it use.

The other option would be to print one side of the brace/bulkhead however I cannot see how to create a plate for half a bulkhead.

Can anyone help with scales and/or how to create a plate for half a brace/bulkhead please.

Thanks for any advise or help you can offer.

Grant

 

I'm not very familiar with how modern CNC cutting machines work, but you could ask if they can cut to a different scale than the drawing. It doesn't seem like it would be difficult to achieve.

 

Hi @Grant Stretch , is it possible to output the Freeship plates as DXF and use another software to split the plates in half, confirm/scale to 1:1 as would be on paper, and then print 1:1 to PDF? It is not the most elegant solution but would remove a layer of randomness.

@TANSL the typical workflow is the part design is prepared in 2D or 3D CAD and then ran into a CAM program to write the code for a specific CNC machine.
The CAM programs allow a user to confirm or change scale of the CAD data, and to write the code to whatever inch or millimeter values the CNC machine prefers. It saves time if the data is 1:1 in either inches or millimeters.

The 'slicing' software for 3D printing is a basic CAM program, where most of the machine based setting are managed through menus so the end user can focus more on the object and less on the programming.

 

Export to .dxf is possible, as well as export to .txt file.
I usually export plates to .txt, then manually convert to .ps (with the use of Excel, it is simple). Then import the file to Corel Draw, which is a very convenient (for me) 2D graphical software. For example, I can easily split the plates into the ply sheets, add puzzle joints, holes etc.
Those who work with CAD would probably prefer export to .dxf

regards

krzys

 

I have played a little with Freeship and recall that there is an option to view either half the design or both sides.It may be that selecting one half would allow the shapes to fit onto a smaller piece of paper/drafting film.I am unfamiliar with Architect E as a paper size and would suggest that you seek a local copy/print/drafting materials supplier to see what the largest material they can plot a shape on might be.I would expect A0 would be achievable in most large towns and you might find a business that has a roll plotter,which effectively gives unlimited size in one direction.If your objects are wider than the roll,you need to add dashed grid lines to allow two or more sections of the roll to be aligned and taped together.

Alternatively you could seek out a business with a CNC router and simply present them with a memory stick that has the .dxf files of the shapes on it.They are likely to have software that would nest the shapes efficiently and could probably cut all the parts much more rapidly than you could,and to a very high level of accuracy.I would be quite surprised if it cost very much more than having a very large printing job done and it might well cost less.

 

Good suggestions from @myszek and @wet feet
Large format template creation via CAD/CAM/CNC is part of my day job.
@Grant Stretch is it possible to share a sample plate file from Freeship?

 

I would think that dxf would work. My suggestion is to include a reference rectangle of known dimensions - say a 1ft X 1ft square. Communicate that to the shop and they can confirm the scale.

 

How big are you talking about?

 

Hi All

Thanks for all the suggestions and in the end I printed the braces/bulkheads as A4 and then enlarged them to A3 on a photocopier. From here I can simply scale the measurements and use that to mark up the timber.

The remaining challenge is that Freeship seems to fold the plates for the sides and keel. There is an option to print unfolded drawings although this does not seem to work so I aside from exporting to another programme I am not too sure what to do.

At the moment I am only thinking about a small 4m boat.

Within the Freeship design I have included a lot of braces/bulkheads and created planes for each (every 250mm) with the theory that if I cut the braces full width and mount them on a backbone I can use them to form the timber giving me the curves for the side and bottom of the boat.

This is a very simple theory and I suspect that it may not work very well due to the complexity of the curves so having drawings to scale from so the timber can be marked up would be great.

The challenge is that when I select either the side or bottom plates for printing it appears the plates are folded at one end, and the print unfolded plates option does not seem to change this.

The challenge is learning how to print plates for the sides and bottom without the software folding it. Even an A3 print would allow me to scale from it and mark up the timber.

Thanks for any pointers.

 

@Grant Stretch can you tell us more specifics about the boat design? Type, shape, materials, intended construction method?
At first read, without additional details, having molds/stations every 250mm (short 10") on a 4m (just over 13') wooden boat (15 locations plus fore and aft points) seems excessive.
It might help to reply to a few more posts and then post some pictures (I think 5 posts are needed to allow posting of links and pictures).
Have you reached out to anyone directly involved with Freeship? Have you tried exporting the Freeship design into other software?

 

Here is an IGES hull from Freeship brought into Rhino, setting up some sections to become molds on a strongback.


PS I was not able to get the Freship DXF outputs to work...but the txt file output turned into a point cloud (just the stations) turned into curves then surfaces was pretty easy.