fnkershner

I am so glad to find this thread. For the past several months I have been teaching myself Fusion 360. I have found it very powerful. There is a steep learning curve but it does pay off. Particularly for someone like me who has never used any CAD/CAM S/W before. I have just recently started to experiment with the lofting command. So get ready I am going to bore you with lots of questions! 
 
So I am still more interested in using Fusion to create plans for wooden Sailing Ship based on blueprints, or creating a design for a CNC Router to cut a half hull. But first let me comment on your subject. I think this is a very interesting subject. These Pre-Dreadnought Battle ships are some of the last Tumblehome designs. It seems that the French were quite late in moving from Tumblehome to Flared design. There are some that feel that this contributed to the failure of the Russian Fleet during the Russo-Japan war. Most of the Russian ships were of a French design. While the Japanese were more modern and used the Flared approach. Tumblehome ships had poor protection below the waterline and were susceptible to capsizing. The Russians lost 2 ships this way.
 
PS most of the navies of the world watched the Russo-Japanese war with great interest. Afterwards almost all Tumblehome ships were scrapped.
 
I will organize my thoughts on Fusion and be back. Thanks again for starting this very interesting discussion.

I worked a little bit on the transom after work yesturday which reminded me that I should post a little bit about both the Charles Martel and using Fusion 360 to design and also 3d Printing boats. 
 
Fusion 360:
First off, once you have the design reference you need and enough photographs (which can take a long time to find as I'm sure many of you know already) once you start sketching the boat in Fusion 360 the hardest parts to get right are the bow and the transom.  The method I use to turn ribs into hulls involves the use of "lofting" function in Fusion 360. It works pretty well in that you select two faces of a sketch and it creates a solid body between the two sketches *unless* the two sketches are at right angles to each other. This means you have to get creative and sometimes it takes multiple attempts to get the program to loft and then you need to go back in and adjust the sketches to get the right shape.   
 
With the Charles Martel, I ran into an even tougher problem - the transom is rounded on the sides and on the top which doubles the effort and experimentation to get it right.  I just got it right but I think it was more like "luck was on my side". I struggled for awhile only getting close and not being able to fully close the surfaces until I tried something a little different and it worked and I was able to take that and use if for the rest of the problem areas.
 
Charles Martel:
For those that want to read more about the Charles Martel follow this link - it's a translation of a Russian book that covers the the Martel and her four sister ships:  Carnot, Jauréguiberry, Bouvet, and Masséna.   https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fmilitary.wikireading.ru%2F35527
 
These 5 ships were called "sample ships" the design parameters were all the same in terms of high level performance, armor,  and armament direction, so built to a broadly similar design, but different enough to be considered unique vessels.....however there were 4 different designers (one designed two, the rest each had their own designer).   The design experiment of these ships was primarily the non-centerline armament arrangement. Subsequent ships produced later reverted back to the centerline type arrangement for the main armament. 
 
The Russian book above I linked to was somewhat critical of the design approach as most of the armor was concentrated along the waterline while most of the upper structure was thin metal that would leave the crew exposed.    This exposure was probably not significant when the designs were initially conceived as armor piercing rounds would pass right through and only cause damage to what was directly in the path of the shell. However by the time these ships were launched the advent of powerful, effective,  and reliable high explosive shells was descending on naval warfare and the absence of adequate protection above the waterline along with minimal watertight compartments meant these ships, including the Charles Martel, would not have a significant role in WW1. 
 

Well, now that the kids are old enough to mind themselves to and from the bus stop I did mention to my wife how easy it would be to keep a few machines printing continuously during the day - maybe that could be a home business for her.  Well, she immediately fired up the computer and started typing her resume! I took that as a signal she was not on board with the idea.  
 
 
 
 
 

You might also take a look at Onshape.  It's cloud based, with a free and paid subscription. Created by the original Solidworks developers. 

I agree! Lars is outstanding. I think he is getting tired of my emails.  but he answers each one. Slowly but he does answer. He is up to 144 live chats. I have asked him for a video on lofting ship plans. He has promised to do this soon.

As mentioned above. Shapeways has recently increased the list of materials they support.
 
Stainless Steel
Bronze
Brass
Aluminum
Porcelain Ceramic
Several colors of various Plastics. 
 
This list is growing. I suggest keeping an eye here.

CDW - This is not true. Shapeways will print any design in 4 different materials - PLA, A different Plastic, Gold, & Silver. of course the Gold & Silver will cost more. The intended Market for the gold & silver is jewelry design. I am not going to tell you this is cheap but it is doable.
 
PS 3D printing is moving in the direction of printing almost any material. Including Drugs.

And here they are finished:
 

And here are the roofs of QG that were relatively complicated to create:
 

I finished roofs on Quarter Galleries and added a bay window (oriel window) on the stern. I use high quality card finished with black foils. The columns and upper parts of the hull (under railing)are wooden.
 

As mentioned above. Shapeways has recently increased the list of materials they support.
 
Stainless Steel
Bronze
Brass
Aluminum
Porcelain Ceramic
Several colors of various Plastics. 
 
This list is growing. I suggest keeping an eye here.

As mentioned above. Shapeways has recently increased the list of materials they support.
 
Stainless Steel
Bronze
Brass
Aluminum
Porcelain Ceramic
Several colors of various Plastics. 
 
This list is growing. I suggest keeping an eye here.

I agree! Lars is outstanding. I think he is getting tired of my emails.  but he answers each one. Slowly but he does answer. He is up to 144 live chats. I have asked him for a video on lofting ship plans. He has promised to do this soon.

As mentioned above. Shapeways has recently increased the list of materials they support.
 
Stainless Steel
Bronze
Brass
Aluminum
Porcelain Ceramic
Several colors of various Plastics. 
 
This list is growing. I suggest keeping an eye here.

I agree! Lars is outstanding. I think he is getting tired of my emails.  but he answers each one. Slowly but he does answer. He is up to 144 live chats. I have asked him for a video on lofting ship plans. He has promised to do this soon.

This is not an area I am very good at. I am very interested in 3D printing. I have stumbled across this site. I noticed all the 3D parts for US Navy ships.

I can recommend Youtube tutorials by Lars Christensen. There are more than hundred of them covering absolute beginners level, advanced, cad and cam.
Lars is also great performer.
I give a link below.
Artur
https://www.youtube.com/user/cadcamstuff/featured
 
 
 

my 2 cents:
 
I have used bezier curves extensively during my stint with the program a couple of years back. what I hated a lot, there was no way to push and pull handles on control points separately - i.e. in Fusion if you pull on one handle, the opposite one extends equally. you could break handles and move them separately but that would create a break in the curve and hard corners. for example, Blender has excellent curves support, you can do virtually whatever you like with them. Solidworks also allows for independent handle control (extending) without breaking the curve. having the ability to change curvature by pulling handle only on one side of the control point is a great feature which wasn't present at the time back then. that was my major frustration source with the software.
 
other than that, it handles 3d curves well, I can't remember about auto save feature, but the save file stays in the cloud linked to your account, so you can continue to work on another device. lofting along the curve between various profiles was also doing a great job, with or without guide curves. I remember I liked the feature more than in Solidworks. one more annoying thing was, the software would update very frequently and it would become very sluggish while doing it. 
 
my rig: Intel Core i7 4770K, GPU GTX770 2GB Ram, 24GB sysetm RAM was handling it pretty well. it did stutter a bit if I had more than 50 curve points, and was
lofting the whole curve in one go. breaking the loft process in more pieces helped...
 
cheers!!

So much brass. I’ve dry fitted the stacks, but I think I’ll glue them before a primer coat, there are so many little bits that keep falling off I’d father get that done first. 

Moving along and commencing in the starboard side, I’m going to do the sides but not the decks prior to painting. I have added some extras such as speakers and lights which appear on the real ship. I also added some brass pipes which are etched in but not 3D. There are a LOT of fire hoses and life rings to add which I intend to paint on the frets and add after. 
 
There are are a few little gaps but there will be a lot of equipment in front of them and railings to go. 

If you go to Shapeways.com you may find additional parts of interest. they have a huge inventory of recent US Navy ship detailed parts.

Dirk - What about the Syren?
 
And Greg thanks for letting me hijack your log.

You Tin Can sailors are all alike!  I wish there was a Spruance that us land lubbers could tour. Most museum ships are older.
 
Dirk - Do you ever finish a model? How many do you have in progress?

I finished the ratlines. Did them on the futtock shrouds too.
I failed to give enough detail. After tying off the lines the watery glue is brushed on and let dry to seal all the line ends where they are tied and hitched. Shape as needed as the glue gets about half-way dry. When the whole thing is done I water brushed them to thin down any areas where the glue may show on the knots and hitches. You want them to look like you just tied them. After all this I usually do another light brushing of water with a drop or two of paint to match the original rope color to mask any glue washed look to them. This is a very light wash. I immediately dry it by lightly pressing front and back sides between my fingers where space allows this. I try to have cut pieces of cloth like handkerchief material around my fingers. You can also use cotton swabs in hard to reach areas. I have chosen dark brown instead of black rope for my standing rigging so I had a drop of black and brown in the wash. This can sometimes slightly tighten it up when the wet ropes dry. I learned this from my flagpole ropes outside. You can also use a stain for this if you want instead of the water/paint wash. I don't like it as well because to me the ropes turn out looking more wet/oily looking from the stain. The water paint wash leaves them flat and dry looking like regular rope. I know some will think this overkill but I love the final resulting look.
 
Jesse
 

Go for the balsa if it works.  My own experience has proven that holly is fantastic for the tiny frames used in the ship's boats as well as the planking.  First they are easy to cut to shape with the floor area having a moulded dimension that is more than the higher portion of each frame and when soaked in water for a few minutes, they can be bent quite easily around a carved plug that is the shape of the boat.   Pure white holly is getting harder to come by but the off white wood should be easy enough to find and it does not take much wood to have enough for a fleet of ships' boats frames.