BUILDING FROM SCRATCH WITH SHAPE 3D

Industry Talk
21

Lol no worries Ive been called worse. Sorry Ive been busy working on some balsas it’s been a major PITA, shipped from Ecuador. Wrong rockers! This even after sending a physical template from the master. Not even close, inches off in both nose and tail, not even close. Anyone looking for new Balsa blanks? The grain and color look beautiful.

 

I hear you on the grasping the 3 dimensional thinking, it was a long road for me. I’m fiercely independent and a gear head by nature so I had to work on my own methods to get what I wanted. Working with some insight of the early machine builders I built my own machine and methods. To this day there is no one that does the scanning and data retrieval as I do. I will put my methods against anyone elses methods for accuracy and ability to scale infinitely with out distortions.

 

I find it comical listening to the early nay sayer about not being able to build a machine that can shape as good as an experienced shaper, even now as those against the machine have no understanding what it takes. I know for a fact all these guys wouldn’t even know how to load the board correctly let alone understand what it takes to write a decent program. Its much more difficult than hand shaping! LOl..

 

If you want to give your customers your best shapes on your best day it’s almost imperative that you have an in on a good machine these days. It will be difficult to maintain your roots and cross roads. That is unless you don’t have customers wanting anything very specific or with much details in the shape and are happy with the shapes as “willy nilly” skim the crust and turn rails.

 

As the years click by it’s becoming difficult remember what I shaped last year let alone 20 years ago. I have many long time customers that have requested shapes from the past decade or two and I have them on file to reference back to and make tweaks if needed or re shape the exact board. It’s common for new customers that have come across one of my shapes after being gone through the used cycle and wanting a reproduction.

 

Realist? / Yes!

Compromise? / No!

Close for some is a mile off for some. / Good is good enough.

How many do you want/need to do per week? / Holla

Necessity is the mother of invention. / Curiosity and knowledge is the mother of invention for some.

 

If you want to have your shapes faithfully reproduced and organized with out any hiccups give me a holla.

22

Hi Bruce:

I have to be careful here not to be misunderstood.

Shape 3D version X is a better program today.

However it’s still not perfect.

I have been using it since version 4.

Many miss use it and some expect way too much from it.

We use RHINO 3D and T Spline as well as a few other programs.

Once a Digital scan is performed you still have to refine the file.

We have used lasers as well.

You have file work regardless.

You still have to know what your doing.

Files are brought to me that I have to refuse to cut on my machine.

CNC/CAD is such a wonderful tool in the right hands.

Sure we can always do better we just need a money tree.

You can only throw so much money at it.

Surfing does not give you the ROI needed to qualify the investment to operate in NASSA mode.

To buy a CAD program will not make you a shaper.

Being a Shaper will help you to be a better designer in CAD.

Wayne is very skilled in both CNC Technology as well as a very talented hand shaper.

Why he doesn’t work in the Aerospace Industry is beyond me?

Kind regards,

Michael aka surfding

Here is a current model scanned and cut for one of my team guys.

681×600 39.3 KB

728×208 15 KB

23

You should be able to right click at just about any place on the rocker line and choose control point / add control point. From there it should be just a matter of selecting mm / cm / inches and then typing in the dims you want into the control point measurements palette.

24

Hi Dead,

 

FWIW I think you should be able to get much closer than 75% even with slices. There might be a learning curve there, but I’m sure you can do it. Even the most funky shapes can be made with this type of programs such as the fat penguin. Some guy over at the boardcad forum made a SUP paddle in boardcad. Of course there are limitations. What you define in the slices and cross sections are exact, however the data in between is intepolated. Basically that means that the data in between may not be defined correctly. So you may need to add another slice/control point or five or a million until you are happy with the accuracy. That said I find it hard to believe that your board cannot be designed within 95% accuracy with a relatively small amount of control points/slices since you block sand you boards. That sounds like a fairly smooth shape. The next question I would ask is if you compare a perfectly scanned shape which may have the odd curve that is not mathmatically smooth with 95% accurate designed board which have mathematically smooth curves but may have the measurements off by +/- 1mm, which goes better? It would be interesting to do a blind test with a bunch of surfers of different level, though I’m sure guys like Michael Ward and other experienced with shaping machines and hand shaping knows a thing or two about that. Also the notion that using slices doesn’t result in a ‘true 3D’ results is just plain wrong. The curves you use to design the board basically defines a bunch of parameters that go into a mathematical bezier/nurbs surface function. A surface function is 3D.

 

25

Haavard: It’s better to record as many slices has possible.

You can take out what you don’t need.

97% for a Pre-Shape.

A good finish shaper for the last 3%.

Slices or FRAME Scanning as been used by AIR BUS, BOEING, McDonnell DOUGLAS for years.

Many Airplane wings are reproduced by frame scanning.

Slices by Digital Scanning is much better than manual scans for copying.

However you can design from scratch with most CAD programs.

Its one of the most efficient ways to PROTO-TYPE.

Kind regards,

michael aka surfding

 

26

I've been using shape3d for at least 8yrs now. I've worked with Lost, Chemistry, Cole, Jeff Clark from Mavericks surfboards,shapers for CI, and many others. I still don't consider myself an expert, BUT I always have said less is more. Keep it simple. Less slices and less control points the better(unless you're trying to create something very specific like wings, or extreme bottoms). If you haven't found it yet: The Measurement Wizard is what your probably looking for. It's in the Board properties and it's a button that lets you input your outline, thickness and rocker measurements. (not available in the free version). Once you've entered your measurements, click the little box that says auto-adjust. It should put your dimentions to what you've entered. Most of the time one of the measurements might not be spot-on, so, after you've got your dimentions I would go back and try to make any corrections manually with the available tangents. There are endless little ways to "clean up" your file, but most require the expensive production version that I have.

27

this may sound like even more work, but when I ran a machine in the UK, we used to use aku to put in guide points, etc, and the upload that file to s3d and tweak from there. Aku lets you add guide points, and then use the tangents to make the curve match, much more like a rocker stick.

we just had a box on the wall, with a tape measure stapled to it, and did measurements with a ruler(in mm.) Input those as guides in Aku, and you get the curve you want much easier.

S3d cuts way better, which is why this outfit used it, but I find AKU way easier to design with…

my 2p anyway

29

Michael,

Thanks for providing this update information. Looks like some great improvements have been made!

30

Bruce I hope you having much success with the “STOKER”!

 

Very nicely done!

 

Kind regards,

michael aka surfding

31

Thanksd Michael…

Yes, we will be introducing the boards to OZ in February and France around April.

I’m meeting Peter C. tomorrow at Hawk’s to p/u his new board to introduce to Taiwan as he will be carrying them in his shop, “Charlie Go Surf”.

Busy, and more busy.

32

Rob try version X!

Kind regards,

surfding

 

33

i’ve scanned a dozen or so boards for stretch in the last year, input them into aku and converted to shape3d. he said the cuts he’s getting off my files rival what he’s gotten from kkl.

i think shape3d is way over done. you can get everything you need from aku.

when i map, i take measurements every three inches - straightline

34

Shape3dX has an improved scaling algorithm. 

If the “Constant proportions” checkbox is ticked, every designed element (profile,outline,slices) will be scaled according to the rate of change in the newly inputted length.

Shape3dX is more than enough to keep the most demanding shaper very happy. Also, before complaining about the way it handles information, learn to use it. V8 is good to, but V9 (or X) gives us bullshit control over the design.

Being a “Shaper” is a quasi dead profession isn’t it? I think its nearly fully shifted to “Designer” today. Let’s be honest to the world of today. 

If you can cut a board right to the designed shape, why would you want to leave extra foam and pleasure yourself by hand?

Now, try to go to someone that truly knows what the software is doing and knows how the machine is setup. I would guess there are around a handfull or two of guys that have that interest.  

…

 

 

 

 

35

Truly aku is pretty much perfect for the usual shortboard.

But, the inability to control the bottom rail curve makes it obsolete for heaps of other boards…

Its scaling algo really works great. 

Its toolpath smoothing algorithm works great. Visible in the 3d wireframe. Based on Splines.

…