Scale Soaring UK

I've just started to investigate this free to download CAD package from Dassault Systems.
For anyone familiar with AutoCad, it's a very comfortable transition, although it is only 2D capable.
I was looking for a project to practice on and settled on the Bowlus Super Albatross, as I've just purchased plans for the Baby Albatross and thought I'd continue the theme!
Finding any information good enough to use as a basis for a model was proving frustrating, although a good 3 view was passed to me by clubmate Roger Spragg, from the Martin Simons book.
An inquiry to the font of knowledge on all things vintage glider related, a certain chap by the name of Vince, (who you may know!), resulted in a set of drawings, measured from full size, appearing in my inbox within minutes!!

Two quick photos of the start of the tracing process.

That's how I do it, it works for me.



BC

Great minds and all that Barry!

Sean Fitzgibbon wrote: ↑23 Jan 2019, 13:35 Two quick photos of the start of the tracing process.

Are you tracing with lots of short straight lines to follow the curves or are you using "spline"s ?

AEB

Or ARCs



BC

Or Bezier curves?

chris williams wrote: ↑24 Jan 2019, 10:24 Or Bezier curves?

No. We are talking drawings here.

SPLINES, POLYLINES, ARCS, BEZIER CURVES, struth - it's back to The Lord of the Rings here!

Wow, all of you guys interested in curves!!
So, I've used arcs where a true arc seems to match, polylines for sections with longer straight elements and splines for the rest.
I've found that when trying to accurately trace the original, zooming in obviously gives you the problem of a pixelated image, so splines are handy to pick a multitude of points that can then be pulled to smooth out the outline.
I'll join it all into one polyline once I'm happy with the editing.