SketchupModeller

Very nice, it will be interesting to see how this progresses. Do you plan on adding any detail below the gun deck?

Part 1: Importing, Scaling, Levelling and Positioning Plans Since there seems to be some interest in 3D modelling, I'm going to try and include as much detail, including pictures, as I can. The first step in any build, be it wood, digital, scale, or full-size, is preparing the plans. Scans of the sheer plan and outboard profile were combined in PicsBuilder Studio, a basic (and free) image editing program. This creates a single plan with most of the details not seen on the sheer plan but that will be needed to construct the hull (wales, gunports, channels, etc). Because Sketchup will reduce large images to 3000x3000 pixels, I divided the combined plans image into two halves (approx 2800x2800 pixels each) and imported them separately into Sketchup. Anatomy of the Ship: Pandora includes the body and lines plans on the same pages as the sheer plan. If this was not the case, they would have to be imported separately using the same method. Once in Sketchup, I scaled the plans to full size using the longest available dimension for greatest accuracy. Before and after pictures for this are shown below (the marked length should be 120') Next, the plans were rotated so that the sheer plan was horizontal. This rotation also made the body plan vertical, but the lines plan was now off by a few degrees. This will be corrected soon. By "Exploding" the imported images, I drew in lines to separate the individual plans (in Sketchup, lines define the edges of surfaces. By placing one or more lines on a surface and connecting two edges, the surface is split into separate parts). At this point, I rotated the lines plan to make the centreline parallel to the sheer plan. It doesn't matter that the station lines on this plan are not at 90 degrees to the centreline, because I won't be using them. Finally, I used the centreline and fore perpendicular as guides to move the body plan and sheer plan into position as shown below and drew in the load waterline and perpendiculars.

This is my CAD build log for HMS Pandora. I am using the free version of Sketchup (with a few add-ons) to construct the digital model. My primary reference is Anatomy of the Ship: The 24-gun Frigate Pandora (McKay). I'm also using a number of build logs here on MSW, especially HMS Vulture (Dan Vadas) and HMS Kingfisher (Remcohe). While the Swan-class builds are slightly smaller, I am assuming (a very dangerous proposition) that similar building techniques would have been used, since they date from the same decade as Pandora. I'll use this post to show the current state of the project, and add updates to further posts.

There's also a very impressive 38 gun frigate done by the same person. Link here: http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=333&t=41265