aston70

My Feedback: (1)

What CAD program are you using? With AutoCAD you can just type the 'DI' or 'DIST' command. Then select your first and second point that you want to measure. It will then tell you the distance. If you want to scale your project up or down there are some neat tricks you can do with the SCALE command. I would first pick a reference point. For example the left most point on my wing. Then I would draw a line perpendicular to the wing tip. Or tangent to the outermost point if it's a curved tip. You can snap to these points. Then I would OFFSET this line my desired wingspan. This creates two parallel lines with a distance apart exactly the distance you want your new wingspan to be (Whether it's shorter or longer). Then I use the SCALE command, select everything, and then pick my first point. At this moment you can tell it to scale by reference. I do this by just typing 'R' and enter key. You then have to pick your first point again. Then you select your current object length. In this case it's the current wingspan and a reference line at both wingtips is helpful at this point, or you could use osnap and otrack (Once you get more familiar with them). Then you just drag it out to your new length and snap to the perpendicular of the line you created with your offset command (Or drag it in if you're scaling down). By initially selecting everything when you began the scale command, you scaled everything together and not just the wings. The problem with scaling plans is things won't be what they say they are anymore. For example what used to be a 1/4" stringer is not an acurate dimmension anymore, and I find that I usually have to do some slight redesign when scaling. When you want to plot your parts out ( like ribs, fuse formers, etc. ) so you can cut them out, be sure to plot at 1:1 scaling. Many times the default is scale to fit and your parts don't match up. I may have made this sound more difficult than it really is, but it's actually pretty easy once you do it a few times. If you're not using AutoCAD, the principles will probably be the same but the commands and capability may be different.

Hope that helps.[8D]