Hi John and FLJ,
Thanks very much for all the information, that is excellent and makes sense to me.
I have deck plans which should give me two of the WL lines in your sketch, these deck lines appear on the side view plans so that should be easy enough, but is complicated by the fact that the decks slope. The model is of a paddle steamer which had a main deck and a lower deck within the hull shell, I also know that the hull plating for the bottom slopes at 3 degrees, so for the mid section I can just extrapolate these lines till they join. I also have a design and "as builts" for a secton through the engineering spaces with lots of annotations of constructional detail giving frame spacing dimensions, and tells me which frames were extended into the deck housing to support the promenade deck. These plans also gives the bilge radius for the mid section.
I do wonder if the copies of these plans I have are not the whole sheet, since there are no borders etc.
I think that using a CAD package will help me since I should be able to verify any assumptions I make in my interpretation of the plans, and "tweak" things about if they don't look or fit right.
FLJ,
What CAD package do you use? I use Microstation because I used it during my course at university and find it much more intuitive than AutoCAD.
John,
Can I be cheeky and put in a request for a short topic on Shell Expansion drawings, particularly the interpretation of the symbols that are scattered across it?
Many thanks
Chris