Creating 2D Plans!

by RAMartinJr@live.com | February 16, 2014 | (0) Posted in How To

Hello,

 

I am a retired/disabled electronic engineer with a limited income, but I don’t let that stop me from designing and building RC. I really love foam board, it has reduced the cost of building a new plane. My last balsa/ply model cost me over $250 while my last foam board plane cost me under $50.

 

I see a lot of people trying to learn how to design an airplane in 3D and God bless you, I love RC Desk Pilot.  However, you need 2D prints to cut and build from not 3D.

 

I wanted to let you know about a 2D Cad program I use and before you ask no I do not work for them or have any connection to the company. I am cheap and I like simple easy to use programs.  The program I use most is called DeltaCad and you can download a 45 day free trial from their website at www.deltacad.com and if you find it is for you it only cost $40 for the full version. This is a great deal, especially when real AutoCAD can cost over $1000.

 

For those of you that are familiar with AutoCAD this program works like the older 2D AutoCAD 10. For those that are not familiar with AutoCAD, DeltaCad is a 2D design program that is simple enough to teach yourself to use. The best part is the simplicity allows you to draw and edit a design in less than half the time it would take with any of the newer AutoCAD programs.

 

The program does have a major drawback; it is not compatible with PDF’s. It uses a DC file format, but easily imports and exports DXF, DWG and other files. You can use a program like Scan2Cad to convert PDF’s to DXF or DWG file formats so you can import them into DeltaCad.

 

If you have a plotter you are all set, if not you can do what I do. I save my designs on a jump drive and take them to a local blue print shop. They can plot them on paper or directly on foam board. I have also heard of some copy shops that can do this.

 

Give DeltaCad a try, if you don’t like it you’ve lost nothing, if you do like it send me a copy of your next design.

 

Have fun,

RAMartinJr@live.com

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COMMENTS

Desert Wings on November 11, 2014
I love your cub plans. I also design 2D, but in Corel Draw. I plan on building a foam board cub soon. I am very interested in printing directly to foam board. Can you tell me what type of printer your blue print shop uses to do this?
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alibopo on October 11, 2014
Hi RamartinJR, having just made a big jump forward in drawing-up my planes, it's great to see other solutions/suggestions for the software on offer. I think you can sum it up my experience in one phrase; 3D is cool, but 2D is the business! And if 2D is the route, there's probably loads of programs out there that can accomplish this task. Some easier to use than others. As an 'old school' engineer very familiar with creating hand drawn 2D 3-view drawings it was an easier transition to CAD for me to use a 2D (flat surface) drawing program. There's a lot of packages can accomplish this (some of them not even sold as drawing programs), but I would say the most important aspect of any of these is if they use layers. The first layer will always be a 3-view (or more) of the subject. After that it's a 'simple' matter of building the new drawing on subsequent layers over the top of the 3-view. A new layer for each component or design element, merging the components (layers) as needed. I saw nerdnic using Photoshop and was inspired by his instructional series 'How to Design DTFB Planes' to look out an old version of In-Design (a desktop publishing package by Adobe, who also created Photoshop). In Design does near-enough everything Photoshop can. My In Design is Version2 - I think they're up to about V8 or 9 now, but what I have is plenty powerful enough. I looked at the cost of older versions of Photoshop and In Design, and you can pick these up for very small amounts on Ebay, $5 or there about - that's for packages that used to sell at hundreds of pounds (or dollars). These are very powerful pieces of software, and because the computing technology has overtaken them, they're super-fast on more modern machines. In Design can print to PDF format, and works seamlessly with standard printer page sizes - I even set-up a template to match the size of the foam board I can buy, which is A0. Working in a space identical to the size of foam board I'm going to cut the components from is great, it allows me to work out the maximum wingspan I can get from a single piece, or multiples for split wings. That's my tuppence worth. Cheers, alibopo.
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jrvalentin62 on October 11, 2014
Great to see you're back on FT. Love your Cub. Hope to see more of your designs in the future. I'm hoping to get a stronger cpu in the future to be able to try out 2D drawing. I'm still a "stubby pencil" kind of designer. It makes it hard to share. Clear Skies, Calm Winds.
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Creating 2D Plans!