I PERSONALY USE THE SHAPE 3D SOFTWARE TO DESIGN MY TEMPLATE, BUT THIS SOFTWARE IS INSTABLE AND FULL OF BUGGS. I’M LOOKING FOR AN OTHER SOFT BUT DON’T KNOW WHICH OTHER TO USE ? DOES ANY ONE CAN HELP ME PLEASE ? BRAND? NAME ETC… THANKS FOR ALL IN ADVANCE GEY
Dude just mark out your template with a bendy piece of thin wood. My god what is happening.
Of course yes you can template with a piece of wood, as you also can surf with the door of the kitchen, thrill of a good day will be exactly the same !!! But ! Personnaly I’m more concerned by windsurf construction and surfboard are usally designed by lengh/width etc… never the volume as in windsurf. Who can tell me what is the volume of a 9 feet board or other ! Is it necessary to know it ? Why not knowing it ? In windsurf construction “marketing revolution” arrived now every weeks !!! and yes it sucks, but we don’t care. Boards get better every five years (really) and the volume was a factor of designing and performance and progression. I shape for my friends only, in my garage, we use technology for fun, and hand shaping is more accurate with this template than with carboard designing in the kitchen with a pair of cisor ! that’s a fact world getting mad, for sure that is what happening, and knowing it can permit to control it a bit !!! good surf with your door kitchen jean jacques
Use DAT 98 - if you look hard enough in the archives here, you’ll find a link to it. It makes great templates.
I use DAT 98 Designer and love it.I’m yet to export files direct to shaping machine, as the CET machine in Sydney (Aust.) can’t shape concaves yet.The real beauty of using a CNC setup in my opinion is the incredible amount of data i can harvest for further analysis and development - mind-blowing ! To achieve the same with manual-design methodolgy would take hours.And just as a tool to use with the customer for discussing ideas, it’s great.The “Open GL” 3D viewing program constructs a cool digital image you can move around to see the effect of small changes in curve at the rail, without the risk of unbalancing all your curves if you make an error with foam and then have to correct it - all the while loosing volume, length, or width !For truly one-off custom work it is excellant.
bonjour john, thanks for your answer, I’ve tried this morning to download DAT 98, on a ftp server, but with no result ! It seems to be in england, ftp://ircpc072.swan.ac.uk/DAT98s.exe If you ‘re interested to give a look at shape 3D, you can download a free version on “shape3d.com” (no print & save), and mail me your adress at , I will send you a file I’ve used, kind of egg (cooper/comet, for example. I print on a AO OCE printing machine baught to an architect for 300€ and have scale 1 template, easy to use with black spray on the blank for cutting. merci for the info ! good surf gey
if you have any copy of the soft, tell me. will be inteterested.
You have a version of DAT that does concaves? I was only able to get DAT to do a concave by hacking the sign bit in the data file. Unfortunately, you only get one vee/concave per board with DAT so normally I design in the vee and have the concave put in by hand during the finishing. You must have a newer version.
Templating has fallen to the computer age. Maybe there is still hope for the world yet.
G’day gey, the man to contact is John Gillis at , he’s the owner of the CNC machine in Sydney, Australia ( Cutting Edge Technology is the company name, www.members.ozemail.com.au/~cetsurf/pages/tech.html ) This machine uses the DAT 98 software.The concave version of DAT 98 is apparently NOT going to be developed.So, hand shaping them into a DAT/CET pre-shape is the only way to go with this package.A cheaper version of the software is available for AUD$110 , while the full version costs around AUD$2000.All the best.
I’d agree with all of that. The volume data is great - it’s amazing how much changing the rail profiles affects volume.
Thanks for the info. I’m a little bummed that the CET guys bailed on the new version - I had offered to help with the rewrite but they didn’t bite. I’d talked to CET John about the concave issue a while back. He didn’t believe that you can hack the sign bit on the vee to make a concave but you can. The only reason you can’t use a negative vee in DAT98 is because the dialog box where you enter the vee angle value won’t accept negative numbers - the core code supports negative just fine but there is a wrinkle to just changing the sign bit on the vee angle. If you hack the sign bit to make a negative vee, the vee angle is relative to the bottom of the stringer. So a nagative vee essentially lowers the rails and leaves the board thickness the same along the stringer profile - probably not what you want. With some work, you can change the thickness value at strategic places and get something like a nice concave down the center of the board somewhere. But in the end, it’s better to use vee for positive vees and put in concave(s) by hand. The real need is to be able to specify mutliple vees (both negative and positive) and have negative vees remove material from the thickness of the stringer profile instead of just lowering the rails. I did offer to help to help [wink]
Right on fok ! I’m all in favour of "open source " - look how far the LINUX guys have gone versus Micro$oft !!! It is a shame, 'cause the CET machine is attractive for 1 or 2 boards of a really customised nature, whereas the other popular machine here in Oz is a company called ABROBOARD with a setup like KKL, but this machine cuts 6 identical boards at a time !!! The VRML 2 file format in the Pro-lite version of DAT i have is not supported by their computer, so you need the $2000 version that exports DXF files ! Oh well, back to the drawing board…
My friend uses an industrial router at work and has offered to cut up some curves for me. The router is compatible with any vector based graphics program, so I’m working on a couple templates in Illustrator of all programs to test this thing out. I have no idea what to expect, but figured it was worth the fun of trying it out. If it works well, I can see some real possibilities. I’d say one is that you can store your templates on your computer as well as in your shaping room, which is just good backup. Another is that you can cut the templates out of different materials such as aluminum or a thin flexy plastic.
Here’s a test board which I plan to cut out with the router. I may try a half template first then later create a spin template. The file was done in Illustrator then saved as a jpeg for web purposes. 
As you can see, converting it to a jpg eliminated the flow of the curve and made it boxy…oh well, you get the idea.
Hey Gregg, That’s a great outline IMHO. I don’t know how to interface the programs you refer to. I’m going to check it out with my tech. Keep up the good work man. Off to work, Rich
I’m in G, I’m coming over with a disk…Nice board in Illustrator. Even though you got the path/pen tool it’s still not that easy to get the board to curve right, depending alot on where you place the anchor points. So ya, nice one. R.
RH & Halcyon: I noticed the least number of anchor point the better. So what I did was create a 9’8 half template, then placed anchor points at each end, the nose (12" from end of course), widepoint (which here was about 8" above center), and the tail. With only those three points (nose, widepoint, & tail) between the end points, it was easier to get a flowing curve, yet it was still possible to manipulate it to your desired specs. RH: Come over, I’d like to see what you mean.