Drafting/Designing scratch builds?

Hey everyone, I was wondering what you do for drafting/designing your scratch builds? I have some ideas I would like to build, but I would like to draft them out first and not go through a hundred pieces of paper doing that.

-Maxwell
 

colorex

Rotor Riot!
Mentor
I personally use AutoCAD to trace my plans. If you don't have those skills, the hundred pieces of paper is the way to go.
 
I have used AutoCAD and Mastercam at school so I have the skills needed. What I'm looking for is a free program I can download on my home computer.
 

earthsciteach

Moderator
Moderator
I have Autocad and the know-how to use it. But, I don't. I prefer to eyeball my airplanes. I have no plans for any of my scratch-built planes. I like to think of them as a high-end, hand-built sports car. They look great, are capable of going really fast, and require a full time professional mechanic to keep them running.
 

teflyer

Full Circle
I use pencil, paper, eraser, and a metric ruler. If you draw it, you can get a basic idea on how it looks like and erase and redraw stuff you did not like as much. I don't waste that much paper. maybe 20 or so sheets over a years worth of time.
 
I just downloaded Google sketch up. I like it! I just started using it, and I drew an airfoil in 5 min! I'm still working on making the fuselage out of one rectangle, but I'm sure I can figure that out in no time :)
 

bmsweb

Site Moderator
I use Catia for my 3D work as in Design and Maya for Visualization . Having said that, Catia is pretty high end and from what I can tell, Google Sketchup looks pretty good.
 

jetpackninja

More combat please...
Mentor
Hey Maxwell-
Maybe you could do an article?
I've seen good stuff done with Google sketch up.
Maybe just do an article on how to make plans for a small scratch build step by step.
If you do I'll give it bunch of stars :)