Rearranging FT plans

[Balu]

Since there was some discussion in the Storch build thread about rearranging the plans to waste less space, I wondered if we could collect some basic "rules" on how to optimize the plans.

I'll try and update this as we go along.

• Colors:
  • black / solid: cut lines
  • red / dashed: score (50%) lines
  • blue / dotted: lightly crease
  • green: symbols and text
  • each of these should be on different layers to make it easy to enable or disable them
• Size:
  • Full plans: 20 x 30" / 50.8 x 76.2 cm
    This is the official "Adams board" size and can be printed on 24", 36" or 42" wide printers.
  • Tiled plans: 7.5 x 10.5" / ~190 x 266 mm (fits on A4 210 × 297 mm and letter 216 × 279 mm with ~0.5" / ~13 mm margins)
• Exchange format: PDF, can handle layers too and works about everywhere
• keep the inch / cm scale to check the prints
• label each part
• Tiled plans:
  • avoid lines close to tile border and crossing a corner of a tile
  • try to have the fewest tiled pages per part or even individual parts per page (extra pages don't hurt as much as glueing tiles)
  • additional grey grid (2" / 5cm) for easier alignment

• Keep prop / electronics information, list additional parts like wires, popsicle sticks, paint stirrer with dimensions or just have an URL to the FT article / build thread?
• Separated or merged lines between two parts?
• Have symmetrical parts twice or just marked with "x2" to save space?

 

[engineer]

The most annoyance i get is with pieces that have lines extremely close to the tile line (the first wing section for tiled plans on storch has a crease line almost on the tile line), or where there is part of a line crossing a corner of another page, which means I need to align an additional page.
Perhaps I'm alone, but I'd prefer fewest tiled pages per part. I do not mind extra pages if it makes the taping together of tiled pieces easier.

(Actually, my Storch plans printed with a grid, which I like because it helps alignment. Cluttered though on black/white prints.)

 

[evan]

I absolutely agree with engineer, it's really frustrating and unwieldy when you have to include an entire sheet taped to a part because of a sliver of line in the corner. An option with fewest pages per part would be awesome. Maybe even downloadable plans for individual parts or at least smaller groups of parts?

 

[jeffbuck]

My only problem is that I use a plotter to print the full size plans, but since the viggen plans came out the full size plans are just one giant sheet that is impossible to print so I end up having to rearrange them or tile 34 x 44 inch sheets. But they are free so try not to complain

 

[Mostly Harmless]

Yes, it would be nice if everything was nicely optimized for layout on a typical sheet of foam board. However, I'd also rather they put more time into the next design... (hint, hint) So far, I've scratch built a Flyer, Old Fogey, and a Bloody Wonder. Those seemed pretty well arranged for a single sheet of foam board.

The Storch plans were something different. First off, I like the 1" grid -- as mentioned earlier, really helps lining up each tile. But I was less than enthusiastic about the extremely large single sheet. So, I'm going to try something different. Rather than stitching together every tile to make the super-sized sheet (btw, I can't find any company to print on a single sheet of that size), I picked certain ones to assemble into smaller sections.

Pages 3-6 get tiled together in a 1x4 page strip, and includes the vertical and horizontal stabilizers, gauges, and a wheel.

Pages 9-11, 17-19, and 25-27 get tiled together in a 3x3 page array, and includes one wing panel and box spar. Because the 2 wings are symmetrical, I just need to flip the pattern over for the second wing and spar.

Pages 14--16, 22-24, and 30-32 get tiled together for another 3x3 page array, and includes the fuselage components (and throw gauge).

I don't need the pattern for the power pod (I've got plenty of those), and the long strips for spacers can just be cut to size -- easy enough to measure the right size without a pattern. As an aside, I'm guessing that the longer set of strips and those small squares are for slats, but I'm not sure... (does anyone else have a guess?).

One other nit.... when printing, note that the Adobe page numbers do not always match the plan page numbers -- many of the tiles are printed out of order, so make sure the page numbers mentioned to print above are for the plan pages and NOT the Adobe page numbers.

I plan to trace these on to either foam board or poster board to make reusable patterns. Once I have these, I will arrange them on a 20x30" sheet to optimize the use of material.

One other hint: because I probably wasn't 100% accurate in aligning/assembling tiles, I can't be sure the aircraft pieces that have symmetrical sides (horizontal stabilizer, fuselage sides) will be truly symmetrical when I get done tracing them. Thus, I plan to trace just over half of those parts, flip the pattern, then trace the rest. This way I will be sure both sides will be the same. Be sure not to use the same markings for things like servo holes and control horn mounting slots, however -- those are definitely not symmetrically arranged.

Anyway, that's going to be my approach for this plane. I'll let you know how it works out.

 

[Hotbread]

Wow! I'd never thought there are others who are "annoyed" at how the plans get printed.

At first I thought maybe the PDF should match up exactly with the dimension of the Dollar Tree foam boards since that's what FT had been directing users to use in their builds. Then I realize most common people only have access to "regular" letter sized printers at home.(A4/letter/8.5x11)

While I'm aware that Adobe PDF have an option to "tile" a large print onto printer paper size, it doesn't always does it very elegantly. I'm often very annoyed that there's this tiny 1 inch or half inch "spill" of a particular template corner onto 3 neighboring paper corners! Forcing me to do numerous and tedious cuts... not to mention the many taping that needed to happen to piece the template together after cutting.

So I spent some time (in Photoshop) with a full sized plan of the FT-22. Slicing the actual templates into straight, even, and conveniently sectioned pieces specifically targeted at 8.5x11 paper size. I've attached what I had done and can only wish that in future plan releases that something similar can be done. Makes for super easy scaling, printing, AND piecing the templates.

Also, another thing to save printed space: If the parts are symmetrical... place a big and bold "x2" on it, so we would know to make TWO of the same template pattern. Adding maybe green text ONTO the template itself to provide additional instructions that may be unclear with just the pattern may help greatly. I often find myself writing onto my printed and cut out pieces to identify their use. For example, the doubler pieces and former pieces in the FT-Spitfire may be confusing down the line to remember where to use them, so I write directly onto the template their location and purpose. ("wing doubler front-top" "wing doubler rear-top" "former cockpit-rear" "former fronts" "former rear")

I can't seem to upload using the attach function in this post, so here's the link to a file hosting:
http://wikisend.com/download/106526/FT-22_8.5x11-A4.zip

 

[FlyingMonkey]

The great thing about Flite Test is that it's more than just the show, it's a community.

We are provided the basic plans from the Josh and others on the team for free.

But there's other people here on the forums, or over in the articles section that are probably much more talented with the design software that would be able to edit the plans to suit all the various requests and requirements that people are wanting.

Here's an interesting way to look at the process...

http://forum.flitetest.com/showthre...perience-You-Need-to-Know&p=129028#post129028

 

[mikemacwillie]

I agree, it doesn't really seem like nitpicking if the community is going to do the work. I have a 24" roll printer at work, so I tend to arrange them for the 20x30" sheets of foam board, as that can be printed on both a 24" or a 36" printer by just rotating before printing.

 

[RoyBro]

It would also be nice to make the plans monochrome friendly, like for a single pen plotter. All that would have to be done is to choose different dotted line patterns for the different colored lines. So we could tell the difference between a score line and a cut line on a B&W print.

Also printing single color at the print shop is often less expensive than color.

 

[nerdnic]

FT Simple Storch
20x30 and 20x90 format

 

[Hotbread]

The great thing about Flite Test is that it's more than just the show, it's a community.

We are provided the basic plans from the Josh and others on the team for free.

But there's other people here on the forums, or over in the articles section that are probably much more talented with the design software that would be able to edit the plans to suit all the various requests and requirements that people are wanting.

Here's an interesting way to look at the process...

http://forum.flitetest.com/showthre...perience-You-Need-to-Know&p=129028#post129028

Oh, I definitely don't mean to sound ungrateful. I love and appreciate all the work FT provided for the community.(Thank you!) I could buy the speed build kit and keep it as template, but storing it isn't as convenient as folding a couple pieces of paper and stuffing it into my plane template collection. I'm simply sharing my template creating process and what I find that works... in FT's spirit of "Cheap and Easy".

 

[ess075]

Do you have the plans you re-arranged for a 24 in printer?

I agree, it doesn't really seem like nitpicking if the community is going to do the work. I have a 24" roll printer at work, so I tend to arrange them for the 20x30" sheets of foam board, as that can be printed on both a 24" or a 36" printer by just rotating before printing.

I have been having issues getting good prints on my 24 in plotter at school. Do you have some of the plans you arranged for your 24 in printer and would you be willing to share them so I can print them for my RC Airplanes class?

 

[nerdnic]

So is someone going to take charge on this? I've already 'rearranged' most of the FT plans for my own personal use and I can just make a thread in the plans section and others can submit what they've done. I bet we have most of the plans already done, collectively.

 

[willsonman]

Agreed Nic. A collective place would be good for all of this. After all, the collection will only get larger. Perhaps a "request thread may be appropriate. Each request should include the basic criteria. Print medium, color or monochrome, for 20x30 sheets, I think if the collective few who are able to do the modifications check in on the thread the requests would still be filled. Perhaps a google account could be opened by someone for the purpose alone to share the google drive with all the plans and have them organized. There are many ways to go about this.

 

[Balu]

I'm working on collecting the information and think about making some kind of template or something. But this week just got a little busy at work.

I will post an update to this thread.

As far as I know there are thoughts on having a Wiki that would make it easier to collect original and modified plans, suggested electronics (from users too), etc.. But we might have to wait a little for that.

 

[Craftydan]

hmmm . . .

keep hearing that Wiki word . . .

. . . and even heard in the last podcast about "community suggestions" for equipment, and re-formatted plans would go with that well.

Anyone can start their own wiki about whatever topic, but if we could get the FT guys to start/bless one, it could get links in the store and build threads and the info would get used . . . hmmm . . . perhaps it's past time to drop some hints . . .

 

[Balu]

Ok, I've updated the list in the first post, but there are still a few questions open:

Would you rather keep the prop / electronics information and/or list additional parts like wires, popsicle sticks and paint stirrer with dimensions too? Or is it enough to just have a link to the FT article / build thread?

Is it an advantage to "merge" two parts so that they share a cut line and save space? Or does it confuse people because they can not identify the single parts anymore?

Is it more important to save space / paper and have symmetrical parts only once (but marked accordingly) or do you like to have each part on it's own?

The dimensions for the big plans seem to be decided on: 20x30" as it has the foam board dimensions and can easily be printed on the different large format printers. For the tiled plans I decided to use the smallest common size (210mm A4 x 279mm letter) and added a margin of 0.5" / ~12mm since quite a lot of printers can not print without borders and we need space to glue anyway. Is that ok for most of you?

 

[Craftydan]

IMO, I'm on the fence about the plan's "metadata" (wngspan, motor, etc. ). might be a good A4/letter sized header page with data, but a scale marking of some sort should be on each page, even if it's just a 1" or 10cm or so line -- just needs to be long enough to quicly and accurately check the print is to scale.

I lean toward making every part seperate, with a minimum spacing. Could be as little as 5mm, but some of these parts are a little confusing as drawn already -- the box spar on the Storch plans is a confusing example of that -- is it a part of the wing or seperate piece? turns out as a seperate piece, but still hard to tell.

Lables for the parts would also be a cool addition, but naming conventions are another ball of wax . . .

I prefer single items for duplicate parts with text for the count -- like one foam-wheel disk, with "x4" printed on the part.

I also prefer single items for mirrored parts, like wings, but just keeping mirrored parts on seperate sheets will help with that -- For instance, the basic pusher Versa wing fits on 2x 20x30 sheets, but you can use only one sheet to print templates for everything you need if you mirror parts. Counter instance, the P-51 wing is not mirrored -- one wing has a paper overlap with the other. Printing the plan for just the wing half with the overlap, mirroring as you cut out and trimming off the overlap on the foam will still work, but you've got to know you need to trim off the overlap on the mirroed half.

Print diminsions look fine. A1 page with 20x30 print area might be more standard -- if you go somewhere that prints large format they should do standard "A" sizes without thinking about it, and that should give you nearly 1.5" boarder all the way around.

For tiled pages A4 with that border should be fine -- "letter" is close enough to A4 that a printer will get pretty close to the edge to not crop top-to-bottom, but not crazy close. Breakouts of parts that fit alone on an A4 would be better, naturally. Also, is there some way to add reference markers for allignment between tiles? A standard for that would be nice to add in.

 

[SOOFLY]

When I print tiled plans there is a small margin on the perimeter of each page that has to be removed. My scale is correct when I measure so I assume I have the printed in the correct size. Is there a way to print tiled plans so that it uses the full page to avoid having to cut off the blank outside margins?

 

[Craftydan]

That's going to depend a lot on your printer -- most printers can't bleed ink to the edge of the paper, so when pre-tiled plans are generated like this, most will include a margin to accomodate the typical printers, and usually, 1/4" - 1/2" margin is sufficent for almost all printers.

Assuming your printer is nice enough that it can bleed ink to the edge, one thing you can do is take the full sized plans and tile print them yourself. Again that depends greatly on your printer -- for my printer it's built into the printer driver, and seperatly into my PDF viewer (I prefer PDFXchange, but there are several others as nice). There are also programs to tile images and PDFs into multi page PDFs -- I hear about them from time to time in passing, but I have no experience with these to even point you toward anything proven.