How to Create Lines From A Simple Drawing

For some reason I wasn't notified of the last two posts. Damn.

Anyway, I have in fact been sweating it. It's still fun though - as long as I'm learning in the process.

My boat is an hours drive away and I can only get there once a week. I try to anticipate all the equipment I will need when going to work on it. Sometimes I fall short. Last week I realized that the measurements I was taking were not equidistant to each other. The tripod would not extend high enough and keeping my laser parallel to the hull's centerline was difficult.

So I came home and thought about it and ended up building some wooden contraption that will slide on an aluminum rail strapped to my mast laying level parallel to the boats center line. The top of the contraption will have an arm also attached to the boats centerline at the deck. I predrilled 80 holes and measured the height of each one not knowing exactly which half dozen I will end up using. The laser will be bolted into these holes (there's a little screw hole). I'll take 6 or so measurements, then slide down to the next station, etc, etc. the bow has a fine entry. I may take more measurements there. Then there's the keel.

Had I a better understanding of the capabilities of the CAD software I would probably agree that this is in large part overkill. Given that I have so little time to work on the boat, I don't mind taking extra precautions. I used only available materials to make this thing. I'm sick of going to the hardware store. But I realized I could have built a scaffold out of aluminum that attached to the hull and set the laser on a dolly. Short of a 3D laser scan, the results would have been pretty accurate.

I go tomorrow. Wish me luck.

 

A first approach. We still have to work hard on it.

 

Looks good. A couple hundred hours fairing with a digital misery board and she will be ready for paint.

 

No, my friend, once checked some dimensions, you can have a good smoothing plane in 20 or 25 hours.

 

I was joking about how much work it would be physically building. Digitally it's just averaging isn't it?

 

A large ship can cost around 250 hours to get the "fairing" to generate the construction plans.
Certainly doing work on a computer screen, digitally. For the old manual procedure can be many more hours.
In this boat, as we invested some hours previously, hopefully not missing many more.