The NEED for "True-View" fuselage side view construction on a plans set...and a "CAD-way" of doing it!

Dear Abufletcher:

The PIPE Here yet AGAIN...and this EXACT issue is why I ALWAYS make up a "True-View" drawing on ANY of my CAD plan sets for for ALL those WW I aircraft I've been, and WILL be working on!!!

I've done EXACTLY this for my first WW I RC Giant Scale plans set that I'll be building from, the one for the Bristol Scout C !!

With me looking once more, here on my PC, at the Windsock Datafile No.44 structural drawing, that I've traced the fuselage structure within the DesignCAD 3000's drawing screen, WHAT I did was to first exactly trace the "orthogonal" side view (right angle side view, as seen from right angles TOWARDS the fuselage side)...then, using the TOP view of the fuselage structure on that drawing, I carefully drew a CURVED line along the center of the fuselage longeron where it curves, from one fuselage crossmember aft to the one behind it. It is VERY important to ONLY draw the curve to a "one bay" length, aftwards from one crossmember's center to the one behind it, and use a SERIES of "one-bay-long" curves, with the forward point of one exactly co-inciding with the one in front of it, to get the idea behind the next step.

After I complete that aforementioned "orthogonal" tracing of the entire set of outlines for each and every structural member IN that structural side view, I COPY it and paste an exact copy of that drawing to one side, to edit later into a "True-View" drawing, to build the actual fuselage side over on the CAD plans that I'm creating.

Now, using the cursor to select ONE particular curve segment, I can, while in DesignCAD, use a "Control-I" keystroke combo to bring up the information box FOR that curve...which includes the LENGTH of the curve ALONG ITS LENGTH. I note THAT length down, with Windows Notepad, and THEN use the "Angle & Distance Between Points" command (in AutoCAD it's called the "Distance" command) in DC to get the "orthogonal" SIDE view plan drawing's distance between those same TWO crossmembers that the curve I just measured spans. I then use the Windows Calculator to figure the difference in length between the curve, and the straight distance of that same fuselage bay the curve spans, and use the "Stretch" CAD command, on the "second copy" of the fuselage drawing I mentioned creating in my fourth paragraph of this post, to LENGTHEN the fuselage structural bay that the curve I measured covers...by EXACTLY the difference between the curve and straight line distances.

The Bristol Scout's fuselage has SIX fuselage structural bays that have the horizontal curve in them as seen from a top view, behind the cockpit, and the differences...since I've been drawing the Scout C plans as if they were for a FULL SIZE Bristol Scout, to get in and fly myself (this IS very easy to do in a CAD sofware program!)...range from 0.024 inches upwards to 0.465 inches. [This IS a British subject aircraft I'm drawing up, from 1914, when the UK WAS a fully "feet'n'inches" nation!] The total difference in distance for a fullsize Scout fuse between the "curved" distance along the longerons' horizontal curve, and the "straight, orthogonal" distance adds up to some 26-3/4 inches (67.98 cm)...for a MODEL in quarter sized RC Giant Scale form, this amounts to a 6-11/16 inch (or 17 cm) difference in length...it IS something to be CONCERNED about !!!

Before the days of CAD software, there were really no "easy-to-use" tools available to the RC Scale aeromodeler to figure all this out...thankfully, DesignCAD's latest release (at http://www.imsisoft.com/prodinfo.asp?t=1&mcid=190 ) IS only US $90.00 to purchase before postage (and it certainly is NOT the only "affordable" CAD software package that can do all this for us)...and, with the right techniques, and hardware to bring a scanned scale structural drawing into a CAD program's drawing screen, a "true-view" model aircraft fuselage drawing CAN be created, that will AVOID the "too short" problem entirely.

Very sorry for being a bit "long" with this post...but it DOES take a somewhat carefully thought-out process to make up a construction drawing to create the "true-view" side view drawing that more of us RC Scale builders WISHED we could have...and now, thanks to CAD software and home computers, it CAN be much more easily drawn up these days.

Yours Sincerely,

The PIPE!