CDR_Ret

We don't (er, didn't—it's been nearly 30 years since I retired; perhaps the US Navy is today a more kinder, tolerant culture...) use that particular acronym, but we still considered surface sailors as "skimmer pukes!"
 
In the early days of submarines, it was a typical career path for surface sailors to transition to the conventional submarine force. For the US Navy today, all our boats are nuclear, and virtually all submarine officers and enlisted must complete the nuclear propulsion training pipeline and/or sub school before ever stepping on board any ship.
 
This YouTube video is the basic idea on how a multi-axis milling machine does a propeller.
 
Terry

May I suggest that the best way to avoid cumulative errors is to measure each frame's position from the same reference point?
 
I had the very same issue with my Galilee plans. 16-inch double-frame room, and 12-inch space. 58 frames.
 
I used a spreadsheet (Excel) and created a formula to calculate the positions of the aft, middle and forward faces of each double frame referenced from the aft-most frame. Each of these positions are 28 inches farther forward along the hull in relation to the previous frame's. The results can be accurately calculated to whatever precision you choose, and in whatever units you need (including fractions, if desired).
 
After the spreadsheet is filled in. You can use a long precision ruler to accurately mark your frame positions.
 
Hope this helps.
 
Terry

May I suggest that the best way to avoid cumulative errors is to measure each frame's position from the same reference point?
 
I had the very same issue with my Galilee plans. 16-inch double-frame room, and 12-inch space. 58 frames.
 
I used a spreadsheet (Excel) and created a formula to calculate the positions of the aft, middle and forward faces of each double frame referenced from the aft-most frame. Each of these positions are 28 inches farther forward along the hull in relation to the previous frame's. The results can be accurately calculated to whatever precision you choose, and in whatever units you need (including fractions, if desired).
 
After the spreadsheet is filled in. You can use a long precision ruler to accurately mark your frame positions.
 
Hope this helps.
 
Terry

I hate to be discouraging, but laser cutting is not generally considered 3D.
You could get some 3D effects with a combination of engraving and cutting but it is a very complex process that would
take multiple steps to produce useable parts.
 
3D renderings would have to come from 3D printers, CNC machines or a combination of these along with some possible laser cutting.
 
If  3D drawings/ files  of Titanic exist they would be in-house at some model manufacturing company.
I do not expect you to find such drawings available to the general public.
 
However, if anyone here is aware of such drawings/files, I'm sure they will let you know about what would be possible in acquiring them.
 
 

Rhian,
 
As far as what happened to Leon after her catastrophic leak in 1915, I don't know.  I doubt if she was used in any normal service.  I will ask my friend in Norway if any of the newspaper articles talk about that or maybe there was just a standard way of dealing with ships in that condition.
 
As far as the lovely sail plan goes, this is one of five (I think) sheets of plans that Harold Underhill drew in the 50s I think.  They are sold by Brown, Son and Ferguson.  It might be that the copies of the original drawings are larger than the ebay picture - I can't tell how big the ebay picture is.
 
A bunch of years ago I built a 'model' (1 to 8 scale) of Leon so that I could actually sail her.  Here's a photo:

 
Thanks for your interest in Leon,
 
Doug
 

I started plotting the frame section lines. The drawing numbers the frames with frame 0 at the steering position. Frames 1 to 38 are forward of the steering position and frames -1 to -7 aft of it. It's a bit slow going but I am making progress. I have commandeered the dining room table - somewhat warmer than the workshop at present and my wife can find me more easily. The Christmas table cloth hasn't been removed yet. My draughting arrangements are somewhat basic, MDF for drawing board, my woodworkers square, dividers, french curves and a much overused eraser. Oh! and a laptop to give the impression of sophistication.

Never the less it seems to work and the bow sections are coming out well. I will publish PDF's of the sections in a later post. 
 

 
 
. 

Hello, Rubkvi, and welcome to MSW!
 
The short answer to your question is No, there is no shortcut, automatic way accessible to the average ship modeller to convert scanned 2D drawings to a 3D digital model. Essentially, one must import a good-quality set of plans into a 3D CAD program such as FreeCAD, DELFTship, Blender, or one of the others mentioned in the posts in this CAD forum. Then you build the model in the program.
 
You should read through the topics in this forum to understand why this is the case. Just accurately digitizing scanned prints can be a laborious process, even with the best CAD software.
 
Feel free to ask about the pros and cons of the various methods. This is a very helpful and knowledgeable community!
 
Terry

I'm working on an early 17th century ship, and have a really naïve question that will clearly show I've never used Delfthsip before:
 
Delftship asks you to input the length. What length? The length of the keel? The length that corresponds to the distance from the foremost station to the aftmost station? Some other length?
 
Thanks!!!!
 

You can trace any drawing with tracing software but the question is if  the projections of the drawing are consistent with each other?
To verify it you should use shipbuilding software anyway, like DelftShip for example. If the drawing includes digital data your task will be easier.

Nice work Terry,
I can't imagine how hard it would be to create a 7 bladed scimitar shaped screw like that. The boats I sailed in (Victoria class) have a similar screw and looking up at it in dock while "sputtifying" (SPUT stands for skimmer puke under training in our navy) I couldn't wrap my head around the design work that goes into them. 

Probably the most difficult aspect of a Cold-War-era submarine model is getting the propeller right. Nearly all nations with advanced submarines came to recognize the acoustic advantages of a seven-bladed, minimum cavitation propeller. The blade shapes are extremely complex, requiring the use of a sophisticated, multi-axis, computerized milling machine.
 
I have attempted to approximate a submarine propeller in a variety of 3D CAD programs including Sketchup, Blender, and now DELFTship. None of them are easy to use. There is nothing symmetrical about a propeller, except in rotational symmetry. Even then, one has to get the proper blade shape before you can duplicate and rotate the blades to their proper positions. The blades are 51.429 degrees apart (360° ÷ 7). If you are inclined to create a 3D printable model, then you have to cleanly combine the blades with the hub to make the model manifold. That was the hard part.
 
The following images provide a fairly good approximation of a US nuclear submarine propeller before the advent of the ducted pump-jet types found in the Seawolf- and Virginia-class submarines. This model was created in the latest version of DELFTship. In the process, I discovered several program bugs/properties that made the work even more difficult than it should have been ...
 

Orthogonal stern view
 

Aft stbd quarter view
 

Aft port quarter view
 
Terry
 
 

Probably the most difficult aspect of a Cold-War-era submarine model is getting the propeller right. Nearly all nations with advanced submarines came to recognize the acoustic advantages of a seven-bladed, minimum cavitation propeller. The blade shapes are extremely complex, requiring the use of a sophisticated, multi-axis, computerized milling machine.
 
I have attempted to approximate a submarine propeller in a variety of 3D CAD programs including Sketchup, Blender, and now DELFTship. None of them are easy to use. There is nothing symmetrical about a propeller, except in rotational symmetry. Even then, one has to get the proper blade shape before you can duplicate and rotate the blades to their proper positions. The blades are 51.429 degrees apart (360° ÷ 7). If you are inclined to create a 3D printable model, then you have to cleanly combine the blades with the hub to make the model manifold. That was the hard part.
 
The following images provide a fairly good approximation of a US nuclear submarine propeller before the advent of the ducted pump-jet types found in the Seawolf- and Virginia-class submarines. This model was created in the latest version of DELFTship. In the process, I discovered several program bugs/properties that made the work even more difficult than it should have been ...
 

Orthogonal stern view
 

Aft stbd quarter view
 

Aft port quarter view
 
Terry
 
 

Just for fun, I thought I'd try out whipping out a Sturgeon-class SSN hull using the new background image feature in DELFTship. Setup was really quick. Shaping the hull was another story...
 

Plan: USS Sturgeon (SSN 637) by Greg Sharpe 
 
Being an old submariner, I may spend a little time on this!
 
Terry

Probably the most difficult aspect of a Cold-War-era submarine model is getting the propeller right. Nearly all nations with advanced submarines came to recognize the acoustic advantages of a seven-bladed, minimum cavitation propeller. The blade shapes are extremely complex, requiring the use of a sophisticated, multi-axis, computerized milling machine.
 
I have attempted to approximate a submarine propeller in a variety of 3D CAD programs including Sketchup, Blender, and now DELFTship. None of them are easy to use. There is nothing symmetrical about a propeller, except in rotational symmetry. Even then, one has to get the proper blade shape before you can duplicate and rotate the blades to their proper positions. The blades are 51.429 degrees apart (360° ÷ 7). If you are inclined to create a 3D printable model, then you have to cleanly combine the blades with the hub to make the model manifold. That was the hard part.
 
The following images provide a fairly good approximation of a US nuclear submarine propeller before the advent of the ducted pump-jet types found in the Seawolf- and Virginia-class submarines. This model was created in the latest version of DELFTship. In the process, I discovered several program bugs/properties that made the work even more difficult than it should have been ...
 

Orthogonal stern view
 

Aft stbd quarter view
 

Aft port quarter view
 
Terry
 
 

Hello Christian, do you want to have only the barrel 3D-printed or do you want to have also the carriage?
 
If you want to have only the barrel of the cannon, I have already modelled in 3D a french 24 pdr barrel of that time. In fact I also have the plans of French 1782 Venus and have been working on a 3d model of the ship (you can see a couple of images of my Venus model (WIP) in the thread for my project 3D Models for PC naval simulation - The Weather Gage ) Comparing the 24 pdr barrel model with the barrels shown in the Venus' plans, it is very close indeed. So I think by scaling it down, it could fill the role.
The only difficulty right now is that the model is not ready for 3d printing (I modelled it for a 3D game, not for printing). The model is not "manifold" and cannot be printed in the actual state. I can test if it can be converted for 3D printing in an easy way. Maybe the polygon resolution is perhaps lower than what is ideal for 3D printing, but I cannot imagine right now how it would look like in scale 1/64 as printed model

Dolphin 38!! Cheers brother.

A Guide to the New DELFTship Background Images Feature
 
Attached are the five parts of a guide I have drafted up to assist modelers who think they want to get their feet wet using DELFTship. It is intended for the complete DELFTship novice, but even those familiar with the program will find this guide useful, I think.
 
Please read Part 1, which includes an intellectual property disclaimer.
 
If you have any comments or corrections, please feel free to post them here so everyone can be aware of them (and I can fix them). I am particularly interested in fixing things that are unclear or don't work as intended.
 
Be sure to install the latest version of DELFTship (13.10 (328 or later)) before you use this guide. It's almost completely incompatible with earlier versions!
 
Thanks.
 
Terry
Part 1-DELFTship_Bkgrd_Images.pdf Part 2-DELFTship_Bkgrd_Images.pdf Part 3-DELFTship_Bkgrd_Images.pdf Part 4-DELFTship_Bkgrd_Images.pdf Part 5-DELFTship_Bkgrd_Images.pdf

Just installed the latest free version of DELFTship (v. 13.10 (324)). It appears that there are a lot of improvements. Most obvious to the familiar user are revisions to the menu tabs. However, if you dig into the settings, the user now has the option of creating models in centimeters and inches as well as the standard meters and feet. You can also set the decimal precision, which is really handy, since the default was four decimal places.
 
This update may be of interest to modelers, who can now create their digital models in the actual dimensions they will build in. [Edit 2/11/2021: Clarified the nature of the dimensioning changes, now that I understand them better!] Former versions had two dimensional unit choices, Metric (meters) and Imperial (feet). If you created a model in one set of dimensions, then changed them to the other, the model would scale in size up or down depending on the direction of the change because the number of units remained the same. Fore example, if you created a 100-foot vessel mistakenly in meters, then changed to feet, the model would downsize to 100 feet. Now, that is OK if you did make the original error in selecting dimensions. However, if you simply wanted to switch dimensions, to understand the size in the other dimension system, that was a problem. With the latest version, you can switch freely among all four dimensional units without any change in the actual size of the model. I found this useful when working on small details in my Galilee model, where creating things in inches was more appropriate than in feet. Scaling down the hull to model-size is easily performed using the program's Scale feature.
 
There is also a new manual that goes with this version, but I haven't looked at it yet.
 
Terry
 
 

A Guide to the New DELFTship Background Images Feature
 
Attached are the five parts of a guide I have drafted up to assist modelers who think they want to get their feet wet using DELFTship. It is intended for the complete DELFTship novice, but even those familiar with the program will find this guide useful, I think.
 
Please read Part 1, which includes an intellectual property disclaimer.
 
If you have any comments or corrections, please feel free to post them here so everyone can be aware of them (and I can fix them). I am particularly interested in fixing things that are unclear or don't work as intended.
 
Be sure to install the latest version of DELFTship (13.10 (328 or later)) before you use this guide. It's almost completely incompatible with earlier versions!
 
Thanks.
 
Terry
Part 1-DELFTship_Bkgrd_Images.pdf Part 2-DELFTship_Bkgrd_Images.pdf Part 3-DELFTship_Bkgrd_Images.pdf Part 4-DELFTship_Bkgrd_Images.pdf Part 5-DELFTship_Bkgrd_Images.pdf

A Guide to the New DELFTship Background Images Feature
 
Attached are the five parts of a guide I have drafted up to assist modelers who think they want to get their feet wet using DELFTship. It is intended for the complete DELFTship novice, but even those familiar with the program will find this guide useful, I think.
 
Please read Part 1, which includes an intellectual property disclaimer.
 
If you have any comments or corrections, please feel free to post them here so everyone can be aware of them (and I can fix them). I am particularly interested in fixing things that are unclear or don't work as intended.
 
Be sure to install the latest version of DELFTship (13.10 (328 or later)) before you use this guide. It's almost completely incompatible with earlier versions!
 
Thanks.
 
Terry
Part 1-DELFTship_Bkgrd_Images.pdf Part 2-DELFTship_Bkgrd_Images.pdf Part 3-DELFTship_Bkgrd_Images.pdf Part 4-DELFTship_Bkgrd_Images.pdf Part 5-DELFTship_Bkgrd_Images.pdf

Here is the official answer to the Mac question:
 

Looks like you need a Windows emulator or whatever is available for Macs.
 
Not a Mac user.
 
Terry

I'm about to start lofting my boat, a 57 foot schooner I have the original plans to and was planning to use Delftship. Seems like the most appropriate program for what I am doing. Looking forward to any updates if they're coming Ab. Any word on Rene getting the next bit done? You're both incredibly generous with your time and it's greatly appreciated by me (and likely a lot of others out in internetworld). 
Thanks,
Daniel

Just installed the latest free version of DELFTship (v. 13.10 (324)). It appears that there are a lot of improvements. Most obvious to the familiar user are revisions to the menu tabs. However, if you dig into the settings, the user now has the option of creating models in centimeters and inches as well as the standard meters and feet. You can also set the decimal precision, which is really handy, since the default was four decimal places.
 
This update may be of interest to modelers, who can now create their digital models in the actual dimensions they will build in. [Edit 2/11/2021: Clarified the nature of the dimensioning changes, now that I understand them better!] Former versions had two dimensional unit choices, Metric (meters) and Imperial (feet). If you created a model in one set of dimensions, then changed them to the other, the model would scale in size up or down depending on the direction of the change because the number of units remained the same. Fore example, if you created a 100-foot vessel mistakenly in meters, then changed to feet, the model would downsize to 100 feet. Now, that is OK if you did make the original error in selecting dimensions. However, if you simply wanted to switch dimensions, to understand the size in the other dimension system, that was a problem. With the latest version, you can switch freely among all four dimensional units without any change in the actual size of the model. I found this useful when working on small details in my Galilee model, where creating things in inches was more appropriate than in feet. Scaling down the hull to model-size is easily performed using the program's Scale feature.
 
There is also a new manual that goes with this version, but I haven't looked at it yet.
 
Terry
 
 

Just installed the latest free version of DELFTship (v. 13.10 (324)). It appears that there are a lot of improvements. Most obvious to the familiar user are revisions to the menu tabs. However, if you dig into the settings, the user now has the option of creating models in centimeters and inches as well as the standard meters and feet. You can also set the decimal precision, which is really handy, since the default was four decimal places.
 
This update may be of interest to modelers, who can now create their digital models in the actual dimensions they will build in. [Edit 2/11/2021: Clarified the nature of the dimensioning changes, now that I understand them better!] Former versions had two dimensional unit choices, Metric (meters) and Imperial (feet). If you created a model in one set of dimensions, then changed them to the other, the model would scale in size up or down depending on the direction of the change because the number of units remained the same. Fore example, if you created a 100-foot vessel mistakenly in meters, then changed to feet, the model would downsize to 100 feet. Now, that is OK if you did make the original error in selecting dimensions. However, if you simply wanted to switch dimensions, to understand the size in the other dimension system, that was a problem. With the latest version, you can switch freely among all four dimensional units without any change in the actual size of the model. I found this useful when working on small details in my Galilee model, where creating things in inches was more appropriate than in feet. Scaling down the hull to model-size is easily performed using the program's Scale feature.
 
There is also a new manual that goes with this version, but I haven't looked at it yet.
 
Terry
 
 

On the more practical side, still looking for a steam-bendable timber for making the ribs, which will have to follow quite a sharp curve at the after end of the boat. Toyed with simply cutting these bends with the scroll saw, but hey that would be cheating! Maybe a greener timber?
So went up to my log pile and selected a 4-month seasoned length of field maple:

 
The easy bit...
 

 
The hard bit....
 

 
The cardiovascular bit...
 

 
and finally the satisfying bit...
 

 
No, I don't have the machinery to do this easier - my shop is 16 ft by 8ft, (I consider myself very lucky to have a dedicated space to work in) and so I manage with hand tools mostly.
Also the spirit of 'Bruce' the shark got me and drew blood in the form of a Stanley knife to the finger last week... something I haven't done since childhood. Some DIY patching up saved a visit to the ER. Hope this build is not haunted!
Next posts hopefully will feature a lines plan from Delfship (maybe...), and I will  set out the frames and test the maple for steam bending.