Haze Gray

Well that's great news - Autodesk must have caved to the community pressure, I remember it was late last year that they announced that the free versions would no longer support export to STEP or STL so good to hear they did the smart thing!!!

It’s still possible to get fusion 360 for free but the free version no longer allows export to the STL file format (which is what you would need for 3D printing). An EAA membership is $75 I think and you get solid works for 12 months… that might be a good option.

Picking up where I left off, I've created a construction plane at the station which is nearest to the middle of the ship using the "plane at an angle" and specifying 90° for the angle so I can look from bow to stern and sketch and size the canvas for the station lines. I've trimmed the image already and inserted it as a canvas on that plane & I've also dropped vertical lines down on either side (using project to pick up the edges of the rectangle that I created in the beginning which represent the max beam of the ship: Looking straight down the the center now - there's a couple of things I noticed - The scanned image of the hull shape shows some very slight skewing which really isn't unusual or a problem but the horizontal lines that I drew to see if I could intersect the position of the three rails is off by about a millimeter or so. Not a bid deal - and usually you have to decide what is going to be the authority when there's some discrepancies, especially when you might be using drawings from different sources. In this case I'll be using the drawing of the side profile as the authority since the differences are really small and it's typically easier to compensate the hull shape lines to meet the requirements of the side profile. but if the difference is large the drawings of the hull shape should control. I've got red circles where the horizontal lines should be intersection of the bearth deck, gun deck, and underside of rail to the outside hull line - I'll actually be using multiple horizontal lines to create points at every station to make rails that follow the shape of the hull from the bow all the way to the stern which will help maintain a smooth surface and more accurate hull shape.

I'm going to be starting the USS Baltimore (C-3) so I thought I'd create a thread where I can share some techniques on using Fusion 360 for creating a model of a ship and the design considerations for 3D printing that I've developed over a couple years as I progress through the design.... The Baltimore is a nice mix of areas that are easy and some harder spots so it's a good example to use. It's also a pretty historic ship - built domestically in the US using plans bought from Armstrong-Witworth. Baltimore was an improvement on it's predecessor (USS Charleston). It was laid down in 1887 and was one of the first US Navy ships with the more powerful and efficient, and at the same time it did away completely with sails which were still often provisioned on other ships of it's time. The Baltimore was one of the ships involved in a diplomatic crisis between the US and Chile during the Chilean civil war. During the Spanish American war Baltimore was second in line behind USS Olympia during the Battle of Manila Bay. As a side note it seems the plans for the Baltimore were originally drafted by Armstrong for bid on work for the Spanish Navy who eventually turned down Armstrong's design in favor of one from JG Thompson - who produced a ship for Spain which was christened the "Reina Regente" which tragically sunk with all 420 hands after 7 years in service..... Here's a few details of the USS Baltimore: Length: ~336ft Beam: ~48.5ft Screws: 2 Speed: 19knts Main Armament: Four 8" guns Secondary Armament: Six 6" guns Type: Protected Cruiser First thing I do gather as much information on the ship – photos are of great importance since a lot of the detail areas of the ship you won’t find in drawings that are available. I was lucky enough to find a series of drawings that included the hull lines on the Baltimore in either the library of Congress of the National Archives (I can’t remember which – since I grabbed them about 2 years ago). I also downloaded every photo I could find from the Navy History and Heritage archives which is a good supplement to the library of Congress and the National Archives. The plans that were available were old blueprints – actually blue! And the lines for the hull were hard to discern so I converted the images to black and white and tweaked the hue and contrast so it was a little easier to see things: Original Cleaned up: Before I go any further, I want to mention that for creating ships in Fusion360 I use the metric system since the 3D printer that I use is basically a metric system machine with movements in fractions of millimeters and a nozzle size of 0.4mm so that particular dimension (0.4mm) is somewhat of a constraint in the design process (i.e. I cannot print something that's only 0.2mm wide) The next step is converting the ship measurements into millimeters (length and width) and creating a box in fusion that I'll use to start designing the hull, but before I actually do that I'm usually checking multiple sources and, not surprisingly, I got different from different sources and usually no clear definition of what the measurement actually is (i.e waterline length, parallel to parallel, or length overall). Since two sources (one of which was the "Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships" published by the Department of the Navy) concurred that the length was 335' and beam of 48'8" that is what I'm going with. After conversion to millimeters at 1/72 scale it comes out to 1418.2mm long and 206.0mm wide....so now I draw that box in fusion 360 on the X plane in Design/sketch mode using a "center rectangle" on the origin and put a line down the middle lengthwise Next I switch to the Z plane and use the "p" key to project a point on both ends. I use these points to draw vertical datum lines that will be used to define the aft and foremost ends of the hull: These lines help a lot when sizing and centering images that you want to trace. This is where things will get a little tricky - so were going to start with a side view of the ship and insert it into the design and scale it up and down it until the ends of the bow and stern are just touching the vertical datum lines and the highest point of the bow is touching that middle line that runs down the center of the rectangle. (To insert, position, rotate, and size an image on a plane in fusion 360 you would used the "insert canvas" while in the "Design Mode"). So I've done that and have it zoomed in to show the bow position: From here, we're going to do a couple of different things. Firstly, you'll want to look and the hull profile lines and write down the station numbers because you'll be needing those later! On the Baltimore there's 23 unique station numbers (going from 1.5 to 21.5) as below: Next is where it starts to get fun (maybe...) - were going to trace the side profile of the hull using the design/sketch mode in Fusion 360. An in the case of the Baltimore we'll draft a line along the all the rails and decks (which you can see named in the picture above) even if they are incomplete. We also need to draw the vertical lines for the stations of the hull profiles. One mistake I use to struggle with was using a straight spline when tracing curved features of the hull, especially the bow. Splines by themselves can work but once you complete a spline it becomes harder to correct. These days I use "sketch points" and draw splines from sketchpoint to sketchpoint, and its a bit easier to make adjustments if I didn't quite get things right. Here's close of up some sketchpoints (in white) I'm using to define the bow: defining And here's where I am basically ready to move on to the next step and add the lines that define the shape of the hull (which I'll be using the vertical lines to do):

Welcome Tim! I agree with others - the toothpick, scrap wood, and thread model in your photos is really good - because it was fashioned by hand from just basic materials available it has distinct presence and real magnetism! And a very warm welcome to you, you are in good company here!

Very nicely done indeed - congratulations!

Hi Jean Pierre, welcome! I do quite a bit of CAD myself but I use Autodesk Fusion 360 - it's available for free for hobbyist but I don't think you can export to other formats like STL or IGES with the free version - to export to other formats you need to pay a subscription.

Condocert is a good one, I think the French pre & semi dreadnaughts extremely visually interesting.

thought I would share what's I'm attempting - I'm using fusion 360 to create the basic shape / profile and then port that into blender to shaping... I have no idea if this will actually work though!

Hi Ron, Yes indeed the figurehead and the stern plaque were likely added in 1901 during a minor refit - Marine engineering from April 1902 reported on the changes of some of that refit included photos of the bow ornament, stern ornament, and a flat plate with a relief that commemorated the battle of manila bay.

Hi Lou, I do have that one and a few others for the Olympia - I know of about 5 bow ornaments/figureheads that have known public locations but whereabouts of all the rest (including the Olympia's) are unknown to me. A 3D scan would make quick work of the modeling - I am kind of assuming that many have been preserved somewhere (hopefully not in private hands). Since I'm very new to 3d sculpting it might take a really long time to develop the skill to do these but eventually I'll get there if that's what it comes to! The bow ornament from the USS New York (ACR-2) was actually at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard Museum, Bremerton, back in the 50's, that's one I'm chasing down too. NH 85145.tiff

Unfortunately the Olympia as preserved does not have the figurehead otherwise I’d be there in a heartbeat!

So, I'm currently modeling the USS Olympia and for awhile I've been thinking about how to model the figure heads on some of these old ships - I have a resin printer that would use for the actual printing - but as far as creating a model I don't think what I usually use (Fusion 360) is really the best tool - maybe blender is the best option? (have never tried it). The figure head of the Olympia was some sort of forging - it's possible that's it's still around and ideally I'd like to 3d scan the entire thing but it might take a long time to track down! Anyone have any suggestions?

So lately i've been looking at large format resin printers - the Peopoly Phenom has a build volume of 276mm x 155mm x 400mm which is really big.... One could conceivably do a complete hull with a lot of detail and do it much faster compared to printer that uses filament. I've been thinking about doing ships that I design in 1/350 scale and that Phenom looks like it is basically what I had in mind... tempting....

I don't think I'm at the right point to sell them but my typical process is to get the design done, then print out the first draft of the parts and see how things fit together and if I need to make adjustments or changes (sometimes I forget to add something, etc). So through that draft process I finalize the design as much as I can and re-print anything that changed. These things take up space so if you're interested in getting one of the finalized drafts I can probably make that happen provided you cover the shipping cost - bear in mind that these ships in 1/72 scale typically range between 1300mm to 1900mm from nose to tail. The one thing I would add is that most 3d printed parts will need some sanding and surfacing - it maybe plastic but it's not injection molded.

Well my only plan really to to grow the fleet! - I have about 700 ships of the period that I would like to model - however, based on my calculations I am unlikely to live long enough to complete more than 350. Granted I am much faster now than I was in the beginning and have about 25 designs that are pretty far along, but it would be hard to do more than 1 per month on average. 1/72 scale is kind of ideal for the typical ship of this period since it allows for a reasonable level of detail for the typical 3d printer that uses filament but the size of the printer needed typically is larger larger than what the more economical printers out there can support (both in build plate area and Z axis depth).

Sure here you go - 5 hulls but the one with the superstructure and funnels is the USS Main - that hull has been sanded and partially painted - I actually have a 6th hull printing that is not in the photo (for the USS Texas - the original one from the 1892)

Thanks Gents, that's very kind of you to say! I really should provide an update - I've been sanding the hull and making the turrets, but I have 3 hulls in addition to the Charles Martel that I'm sanding and it's been kind of cold out in the garage so I've slowed down a bit. maybe In another week or two I'll post that update.

Hi haven't tried this but thought I would share (as it might have uses outside of fine modeling). Truck Bed Liners Improve 3D Prints | Hackaday

Ambient air temperature can make a bid difference with resin printers - you might want to try putting the resin printer in a closet with a small space heater on low, get the air temp in the 70's or low 80's and see if you get more successful prints.

I think Bilge rat is probably right about the rabbit hole - but I'd say you're probably further down that hole than you think! This topic has a lot of great information: https://modelshipworld.com/forum/34-cad-and-3d-modellingdrafting-plans-with-software/ How things are done in fusion similar to how things are done in blender - basically tracing hull lines and then some lofting operations. I'd recommend just finding plans of a ship that you're passionate about and heading over to that "model drafting plans with software" topic and start posting your attempts, you'll get a lot of help. Next time I do a hull I'll make a video to show you a few basic techniques. If you like to witness torture: here's 40 minutes of me hating life and trying to model a French Torpedo Aviso.... lofting hull in fusion 360 - YouTube

Wefalck, I forgot to address your question on smoothing out the lines - I typically sand down the layers (sometimes by hand, sometimes using a small orbital sander) and also I sometimes put a very very thin coat of gesso and then sand that flat. when I say thin, I mean very very thin layer of gesso - it can work really well but I've not perfected that technique but it can work extremely well.

Cost can vary depending on the skin thickness and the infill percentage - these days I go with 0.7mm skin and 20-25% infill depending on the part - and the cost range from ~$60 - $120 for the hull. I've noticed though that some resin ship kits can get pretty expensive, more than what it costs to print a large scale one in PLA.

Glad I found this thread - I've been designing and printing hulls for the past few years (mostly designing as I like that part the most) but do print some in large scale using PLA+, but I did pick up a resin printer so i can start printing them out in a smaller format for even more fun. I've been using fusion and it took me awhile to figure out how to do it (that was back in 2018!) Largest hull I have is about 1.7M long but I have a few plans for 2+ meter long hulls. Since most of what I print is large I spend a lot of time maintaining machines (especially the wiring) and used to use a battery backup until I figured out how to configure printing resume after power loss (happens occasionally where I live due to trees!). I have been refining the design for the hull joining tabs that helps with alignment - not perfect yet but what is?

Another update here - after finishing printing all the hull sections yesterday I spent some time cleaning them up a bit. Prior to permanently joining them all together I needed to put in some of the threaded inserts for stepper mounts and the arduino control board. The "heat inserts" I use are from Mcmaster Carr: heat inserts | McMaster-Carr and they come in a many different sizes. I typically use 3mm inserts with 3mm machine screws, and there's several different types available even in just the 3mm size. The row on the left are for 3mm and there's a 2mm example on the right side in this photo. Note I would recommend you spend the extra money on the heat inserts from Mcmaster Carr, the cheap ones you can get off ebay are (in my opinion) garbage. Easy to install a 3mm insert using a soldering iron with an adapter or thin tip: And here's what it looks like with most of them installed. The aft most inserts are where the motor mounts get bolted to. Next I started gluing the section together - a thin layer of 5 min epoxy this time since I didn't have any 10 min lying around. I find that 5 min epoxy is okay but sets quick and sometimes if there's some alignment issues your racing against the clock in a most uncomfortable way. So I always check and recheck how things are fitting together before I mix up the glue. I also take time to figure out which tabs will need more clamping pressure and have those handy. You can kind of see the glue in this photo, keeping it to a thin layer means less ooze to wipe off. After gluing 3 pairs of two sections together I sent them aside for an hour or so to fully cure And then I joined the three groups into complete hull.... (I forgot to take a photo but just imagine the whole boat with the bow on the floor and totally vertical teetering precariously against the work bench!) Then once cured and when the Admiral wasn't looking I used the dinner table again for a photo of the completed hull: The next step will be sanding the hull to get all the layer lines out and a smoother surface. This can easily be done by hand although there's tricky area's that will need careful attention (more about that later). For the most part a 2" air driven orbital sander will make quick work of most of the sanding. I'll start that after work tomorrow.