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.

Cliff Evans wrote: ↑24 Jan 2019, 18:18 You can curve a polyline by entering "a" on the keyboard whilst using the polyline. Go back to straight line by pressing "l"

And you learn something new and useful every day, here.



BC

Hi Cliff,
absolutely, the use of the 'a' on the command line once the polyline is selected works very well. It basically turns the polyline into a variable arc, and the vertices you pick on the trace outline are then available to edit.
Out of curiosity, what programs do you currently use?
Sean.

A little progress, an hour here and there.
I am really impressed with the software, at the moment I'm just tracing outlines and checking that dimensions agree on the sections in the various views. I plan to trace all of the drawings, then scale them to finish size and then copy that to fill in the model structure.
Initially I was thinking of a 4 metre model to aerotow, but I may do a 2 metre as first and slope it.

So ,Cliff, what would you suggest is the best way to insert or attach screenshots into forum posts? As you can see on my last post I screen printed to a Word doc and attached that.
Secondly, if I get to a point with my Super Albatross project where I have a plan and time to build it, what would you need me to supply to have a set of parts cut?
I must admit I've really enjoyed the process so far and I want to see it fly!

Sean, another image editing program is Irfanview https://www.irfanview.com/ good for cropping screen shots etc.

Is this fly before the other ones still on the building board

Frank Skilbeck, you know me, can't tolerate the thought of an empty building board! Started the main box spars for the AV48 in the clubroom this evening!

Thanks for that Cliff, I'll have a look at that software

Fin and rudder traced and added to the General Arrangement drawing, on which the scale is now full size.

All of the component parts are now traced and scaled up to full size. I'll copy them and scale them to my required model size, probably around 4 metres, and then start thinking about the construction.
I'm really impressed with this software, highly recommend it to anyone wanting to experiment with CAD.