Balsa plans to foam conversion in Sketchup

     Using Sketchup and Cute PDF, we will create plans for foam planes, from plans for balsa planes. These plans will allow us to use standard FT style construction techniques, such as "A" and "B" folds along with common FT wing folding techniques to build foam versions of balsa built up models.. This article will highlight and demonstrate a couple simple techniques. Techniques like using the Push Pull Tool on seperate pieces and using the Intersect Faces Tool to let Sketchup create the geometry.

     To demonstrate these techiniques, we will use the RC Modeler Magazine Trainer 5. Here are links to the original article and plans. Original RC Modeler Magazine Article Original RC Modeler Magazine Plans. These were all found on this web site http://www.outerzone.co.uk/index.asp. For some, this plane is simple enough to model in foam without going through the trouble of creating new PDF's. But, since this plane is pretty basic, it allowed me to illustrate the process a little quicker. In future articles, we will cover things like more complex fuseage shapes, wing taper and sweep, turtle decking and swappable power pods. But for now, we will stick to the basics of making the plans. Here is a series of videos that take us through. These were divided up into short segments so that you wouldn't get bored to death watching my poor production.

In the end you come up with plans that look like this RCM Trainer 5 Foam Plans. Those plans produce a plane that looks like this.

That plane fly's like this.