Printing Outline in AKU Shaper

ok so i was going to start building my 6’8 thruster for use in the East Coast winter surf. so i went to print out the board outline from aku and it doesnt seem to print correctly, at least to me. it doesnt center the lines on the paper and it seems to skip pieces also.

ohh and thank Brian for the blanks, and the shaping dvds. should have a rough shape of the fishcuit by the end of the weekend. thought id start on the fish before tackling the potato chip shape

What size printer are you using? a large format or 8 1/2 x 11 and pasting them all together? I had the same problem when I tried to print with the free version. You might need to do the print screen button then print it into a photo program. On adobe you would then need to set the canvas size to the size of the board to get it full size, then get it to a printer of the right size.

If that doesn’t work, PM me with the drawing, but not the AKU file. I’ll put it into autocad, print it out full size on my blue print plotter, and U S postal mail it back to you.

Ya, I tried the same thing a while back, to print the outline on 8x11 sheets and taping them together, and cutting it out to a full half template. Never got it to work for me, let me know if you are successful doing that. The guy at greenlight has some outlines posted that he seems to have done like this.

Anyway, keep it posted if you figure this out, would help a lot of people I’m sure.

Thanks

Give boardcad a try. IMO the printing in boardcad is a big improvement over the printing in aps3000/aku.

regards,

HÃ¥vard

yeah im trying the paste 8.5X11 togeather and its coming up really short. for my starter board i am using one of Brians(greenlightsurfsupply) template.

im going to wait till i get up to school so i can use the big printer that i have in my lab classes. thank you for the offer.

…hello Haavard,

Can I print spin templates with your program?

also,

one bad stuff with AKU shaper is that is not possible to just put (enter) the basic dims in the control box

only the length

is possible to do that in the boardcad?

thanks

Quote:
Give boardcad a try. IMO the printing in boardcad is a big improvement over the printing in aps3000/aku.

That’s for sure–

I noticed AKU has changed their default view–it’s pretty neat now with the nose-to-tail shading and the 1" checkerboard pattern you can turn on for background–also they have the smooth rendering of the outline–forgot what that’s called.

In my case I want to export the whole outline or profile in one piece so I can then tweak it in Illustrator.

I thought it would be easy by printing to Acrobat printer driver then opening it in Illustrator.

But for the life of me I can’t get Boardcad to print an image bigger than about 10"x10", even if it is printing onto a page that is 92x92.

It just prints small tiles on many large pieces of paper.

???

You can open that Boardcad brd in AKu though to PRINT a PDF.

(I don’t know if Boardcad has a 1 page PDF option but I never found it.)

That help?

All you need is a printer with a banner function in the software that runs the driver.

For the record:

on my system, both java programs (boardcad + apushaper) will tile the outline/profile onto many pages, even if I try to print it onto one long page. Something wrong-maybe the page size info from the print dialog box doesn’t get passed along when rendering it.

nor will they let me print to a file using a printer driver (other than adobe/primopdf).

However, I can open the file in Shape3d lite, go to Plan view with a scaling of 0.2117, then print to the pdf print driver.

Comes out exactly as I designed it, in real size.

Simple and intuitive, right?

Quote:
...hello Haavard,

Can I print spin templates with your program? …

I doubt it would do it as one piece, but if it prints out full size half templates, then you could just fix them up together, split them at the midpoint, transfer the two quarters to the template material and go to cutting. Voila.

There seem to be some oddities with the page size info coming from printer and print dialog as it doesn’t seem to be picked up in the program. I use a variety of pdf printer drivers and that seem to work just fine. Also the A3 printer at work prints just fine.

Printing of spin templates will be in the next release.

Ok i know this thread is long over, but i wanted to put in my 2 cents in, in case anyone is viewing this with the same problem.

the easiest way IMO to print out a template on standard paper is to first print out half the board outline (anywhere from the first 6-10 pages depending on the size of your board) with the layout on landscape. you will have about 2 or 3 pages showing the tail and then alot of blank pages and then 2 or three pages of the nose. tape these together in order overlapping the pages by about 3/4 of an inch, then print out the first half again with the layout on portrait. you will then have a few blank pages first and then where the outline went beyond the paper before will start on these pages until you get where the line meets where the nose contour went beyond the page. sounds confusing but very simple, it took me about 10 minutes to tape everything up. Have Fun!

  • Alex

I just hit “print fullsize template” and the printer spits out all my pieces of paper.I then mark my sheet of masonite using a tape measure and a 12" speed square,I think its every 9 inches to allow for the margine on the paper.Then spray adhesive each piece in the correct place on the masonite,then cut it with a circular saw and true it up with a sanding block if need be.This works for the profile templates too.

To get around the whole printer issue I move my cursor through my design and write down dimensions at various points, then draw it on the blank.  

For example, if you write down the board width at a specified increment (e.g., every 1" on nose and tail, every 2" elsewhere) you can lay out the template and connect the dots pretty easily.

Thickness/rocker is a bit harder because the planer wipes out any marks you make; but if you create a data cheat sheet of reference points you can keep track of where you’re at using your calipers, foam-ez t-square, and straightedge.  This is pretty much what a CNC machine does; being a human CNC takes time but it works.

printers are cheap now days,I’ve done it the way you described and it is time consuming and I would often get flat spots in the outline.Now I just sit down with a cold beer in the evenings and print out tomorrows projects.

That’s pretty much my prefered method, however since I print with inch sized grid in the print I don’t mark any positions, just snap a chalk line and align the sheets grid to that line and to the grid in the previous sheet. If you want to make a template on any particular material, this is just as easy and accurate as using a banner printer IMO. That said, I’ve looked at why banner printing fails and have some ideas, but need a banner capable printer to test (and some free time, finding that is hard with three small kids…)

Note that spin template printing is supported in the boardcad alpha, you can get it from http://boardcad.org/index.php/Download:BoardCAD

regards,

Håvard