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[Martin (Admin)]

Evening all!

I was at Deans Marine today fixing one of his large format printers and we got around to discussing his laser cutter.... NICE piece of kit!

Anyway, I asked, 'what is involved in "converting" a free mag plan to a working laser cut kit?'
Ron said, ' scan the plans piece by piece on a flatbed scanner, then use "Corel Trace", to convert the jpg to a Corel drawing ( CDR?) or import the scanned jpg into Corel, create a new layer and recreate the plan over the plane using 'Hair width' lines.'

OK, so no real problem there... except I don't have Corel draw.
So, any freeware programs that scan to CAD?

Plan published in Model Boats, Dec 2004. Thomas the 12" Tug.

[condeh]

Skip the Corel step, import the scanned jpg straight into a CAD program, and 'trace' them out.


I found http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1570516 which has some hints if you don't already have a CAD program. DraftSight seems to be the program of choice.


Corel Draw (or free equivalent) might be easier though... CAD is a pain...

[tigertiger]

Unless you are familiar with with full blown DTP (DeskTop Publishing) packages like Coreldraw, they can also be a pain. Just like CAD there is a whole new vocabulary of terms and ways of doing things to learn as well. They are not as intuitive or user friendly as MS or Apple software.

[Pat Matthews]

The job is to get the scans/tracings into a VECTOR format file, and many programs can be used for this. At:
http://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=151938&p=592321#p592321


I mention using a good quality FREEWARE package (Inkscape) to create vector based art for decal printing. Yes, there's a learning curve, but nothing good comes easy, right?

[mermod]

When I bought my laser I hated CorelDraw with a passion, much preferred Autosketch, however I find Corel to be easy to use when tracing plans, all the builds I show here on mayhem are traced with Corel, but don't expect to use auto trace as its not smart enough.
Phill

[TugCowboy]

I'm absolutely with Pat on this one. Inkscape is ideal for the job and, best of all, it's free.


So many decent free alternatives to the big buck packages and generally, once you get used to them like any software, they do everything you need them to anyway.


As Phill said, AutoTrace works correctly for such a small portion of the time (straight lines, easy curves and no intersections etc) that you may as well ignore it for the purposes of scanning plans and trace it manually anyway, probably ends up quicker and after a few sessions of practicing you'll have no trouble tracing a model boat plan.




Of course an alternative to getting a laser cutter is to build a 3D plastic printer, you can get the kits for just over £400 now, or Maplin are even selling them for just over £600 I think. Much cheaper than a cutter and no problem for anyone on here to make I certainly shouldn't think.


Alex

[vnkiwi]

Laser cutters & 3D printers.
They each have their individual uses, but neither can replace the other for ALL model building.
In combination, they are a winning combination.
As to "tracing from Mag pictures/plans" there are a multitude of free and cheap CAD programs available, along with the "publisher style" ones.
If you haven't used any, simply choose one, learn it, and keep using it to do what you want. That way you will quickly learn, however if you go "trying" a selection then best of luck, you will be a "user of all, master of non".
As long as your choice does what you want, in a method that suits you, be happy.
All you need is a program which allows you to "import picture" and export to whatever "file format" you need for your printer/cutter.
The bit in the middle is up to you.
cheers
vnkiwi

[mermod]

probably the main thing to consider is what laser or laser cutting service you intend to use and find  out what they recommend, all too often I have someone turn up with a simple cutting job drawn in some obscure format that "sort of" works when imported and then spend the next couple of hours trying to make it work,can't speak for all machines but the Epilog systems are aimed totally at Corel draw.
Phill

[grendel]

depends how often you want to do it, but the software called scan2cad has a free trial and is about the cheapest (and one of the best) on the market. its better to scan to a monochrome .tif file format (smaller files and easier for conversion software to handle).
From about £165 - http://www.scan2cad.com/product-features/
Grendel

[dougal99]

Martin, Try lots of pretty please with Ron. You know he's just a big softy at heart 

[Martin (Admin)]

What's involved in digitizing  2D plan to a 3D model for 3D Printing?


E.G. If I have a large fiberglass hull, say 1000mm long, I want to down scale it to 300mm.
       I then want to 3D print it (in sections),  so as to make a positive mould,
       then a reverse / negative mould for Vac forming...
 
 

Where do I start?   

[grendel]

if you have the hull lines plan you could just print the negative mould directly, though smoothing might be required. other than that there are applications that can create a 3d model from photographs - eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y7PNkQfNt0
I have not tried this personally yet as my printer has a scanner built in for smaller objects.

[SJG001]

There are a number of 3d scanners available on Amazon (or similar) which could allow you to scan the hull. This would create a shell which could be edited in a CAD package and converted to a solid. Some maker groups / hobby groups will have a handheld scanner you can use without buying one yourself.

• There will be some degradation in resolution between the original and the copy - it's like taking a photo of a photo
• Be careful you don't violate someones property rights particularly if the original hull was manufactured or from a kit.

[Martin (Admin)]

I have all the hull-lines (now), how would I go about doing it from plans?

[tsenecal]

This tutorial pretty much explains exactly what you would have to do using delftship, a ship modeling cad package that is free, and runs on windows:


Tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCOmPcBZv58

towards the end of the tutorial, he even shows how to scale the design to a specific length

delftship:
http://www.delftship.net/DELFTship/index.php

[grendel]

tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCOmPcBZv58

towards the end of the tutorial, he even shows how to scale the design to a specific length

delftship:
http://www.delftship.net/DELFTship/index.php

quoted to resize text

[Martin (Admin)]

Anyone able to or know of a service that can  convert / render a 2D plan to 3D for 3D printing?

[DavieTait]

Do a search on Thingiverse for model boats , see who has the best looking ones then try and contact them to see if they'd do it and how much it would cost Martin , might be the cheapest way

[Martin (Admin)]

Do a search on Thingiverse for model boats , see who has the best looking ones then try and contact them to see if they'd do it and how much it would cost Martin , might be the cheapest way

Very Clever Mr Bond!   

[warspite]

What's involved in digitizing  2D plan to a 3D model for 3D Printing?

E.G. If I have a large fiberglass hull, say 1000mm long, I want to down scale it to 300mm.
       I then want to 3D print it (in sections),  so as to make a positive mould,
       then a reverse / negative mould for Vac forming...

Where do I start?   

 

 
I have wanted to do this for years for a project, drawing a 3D solids outside, creating an offset and using it to be the plug, then creating a block that the outside is subtracted from to create the positive mould.

[JohnG]

hi martin,
in reply to your "What's involved in digitizing  2D plan to a 3D model for 3D Printing?"
i followed this process
https://modelshipworld.com/topic/20027-hull-modeling-with-blender/
using the free blender software to create a hull etc.
there's more detail in the posts re the hms broke model i'm building.
https://www.modelboatmayhem.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,64903.0.html
it was a lot to learn/follow with the blender package, but (as a novice modeller) i'm pleased with the result.  i started with blender because that's the hull modelling method i found (and it's free!)
it does rely on the plan having the cross sections included  - which isn't evident from the posted pic?
taking a modelled shape and subtracting it to form a mould is relatively simple compared with the other steps! (using the 'boolean modifier' if anyone's looking to google the process)
hope this helps

[JohnG]

postscript:
if it's the 'thomas the 12 in tug' model that you want to work with, someone's already created 3d files here!!


https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2840309/files
i did a quick import into blender and it looks good.
might be a very good route to a solution.

[Martin (Admin)]

postscript:
if it's the 'thomas the 12 in tug' model that you want to work with, someone's already created 3d files here!!

Oo! Very interesting, thanks JohnG!

The Thomas 12 was an example but really more interested in the TID Tug.... yes it does the cross sections.
 
 

( cross sections distorted for copyright purposes )