Re: Cross sectional slices

[Kevin Morin]

One more item in this topic. The application SketchUP has an ‘offset’ tool that will automatically create a copy of a closed planar object which is a given distance inside OR outside an outline plane.

This allows the full height and breadth ‘slices’ of the Plug In mentioned above to be used to create frames from the full transverse sections. Further, if an x-verse frame were deeper below the chine than from the chine up? (common case) then.. two offsets could be taken one, for example at 6″ inside the outline of a ‘slice’ and the other 4″ inside the same outline.

Using the line tool in SketchUP then point of intersection of the 4″ offset and the 6″ offsets could be drawn/connected so the resulting transverse frame was 6″ deep in the floors and 4″ wide at the topsides; after deleting the initial top line and the other (now) superfluous lines- the outline of a frame could be exported via *.dxf format to Gcode processors for tool paths.

This is a very low cost way to create frames from D’Ship and SketchUP, along with the Plug-in app.

cheers,
Kevin Morin