Creating 2D Plans!

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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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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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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