I clipped Marty's and added them below because I think
it fits in to what we are talking about.
"Rufus has some good points there.
I happen to work with CAD programs (you have to make a living somehow)
and while some are better than others, they all have a learning period.
I can "read and write" with various CAD programs, but for projects at
home (and even initial designs at work) I very often use pad and pencil.
For initial design it is very fast and cheap, provided you have an idea
what you want to accomplish.
If you have no idea what you want to accomplish, even the best software
won't help you.
For occasional use CAD programs are too cumbersome and expensive,
thinking about things like AutoCad (very user unfriendly, and in my
opinion not much better than a drawing board), Solidworks (no Nurbs
splines), CadKey (Silly file structuring), I would say:
if you are not going to use it very frequently, don't bother.
You can also do a websearch, there are a few free cad or design programs
available, can't remember any right now, but I know they are there,
because I have tried a few a while ago.
Can give you a feel for the frustration of an expensive CAD program...

So, here is my plea for the pad and pencil from the dollarstore for
Number One Design Tool, lol"


William R. Watt wrote:
stevej ) writes:

William R. Watt wrote:

The best
ones have the simplest set of essential information.

Man, ain't that the truth. You got to SIMPLIFY.
But I don't understand, if you can build a model, why
can't you draw it?


...

So, why do you even want to "get it down on paper"?
Is it to sell the design?
You mentioned that you don't plan on building it.
Who will build it?


I see plenty of amateur boat building projects on the Internet but rarely
an amateur boat designing project. I can only think of one for a one sheet
boat and Barend Migchelsen's geometric analysis of a dory. I thought I'd
try to design a boat and show the process on my website. It's a boat I'd
like to build and sail but that's not practical for me to do. The boat
is kind of unique so I'm starting from scratch. The closest boat to it I'm
aware of is the 15 ft West Wight Potter. This is a first for me.

As part of the project I'm using some free computer programs off the net
and hope to write up some guidance on how and when to use these particular
programs as well. I'm using three because no one gives me enough
information. Although the computer programs produce line drawings from
tables of offsets I'm not happy with the way they smooth the curves as I
manipulate the offsets. I don't know how to get any of them to draw a flat
run. Those are important because I hope to use the numbers one program
puts out for cutting the plywood panels.

I've scanned sketches and captured screen images. If all goes well I hope
to take photos of models and scan them too.

If it's ever finished I won't be selling plans. People could use the design
for free as long as they don't use it for profit.


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