by TIM WEBB » Mon Aug 14, 2017 11:57 pm
To me (and I'm pretty sure John would have agreed), the beauty of doing drawings like these in CAD is the ability to accurately dimension and "test fit" all the elements on screen, in order to see where things may or may not match up. They are in no way meant to be used for any kind of CNC cutting of parts. When we both used to have jobs, we both used CAD on a daily basis, and it was kinda neat to be able to also use that tool for boat-related things, such as our rudder head designs. I have no doubt that TRW's improved rudder head would have taken me at least three tries to get right w/o CAD. With CAD, it came out right the first time.
As I've stated here and elsewhere, I only drew them up for kicks since some folks had been asking about them. I saw the post with the (very) loosely dimensioned photos, and thought it might be fun/challenging to come up with something a bit more "precise". There were a lot of places on the dimensioned photos where the dimensions didn't jive, so I was forced to "interpolate", so to speak. I guess it turns out there wasn't much precision at all in these floorboards over the years, and even if I had a DS1 (which I didn't, nor access to one), with complete, original floorboards, to compare the drawings to, even then they wouldn't have been correct for all versions/variations over the years.
I originally put these out several (many?) years ago, and sent them out to a few people along the way. Nobody pointed out any discrepancies to me until I sent them to John earlier this year, and of course he noticed differences right away, since he had a DS1 by then and also access to other DS1s to look at.
I guess no good deed goes unpunished ...
P.S.: I never charged anyone a dime for these - to include plotting them out on manila stock for one guy. Just trying to pay it forward ...
Tim Webb
1979 DS2 10099 The Red Witch
(I used to be Her "staff", in the way dogs have owners and cats have staff, but alas no longer ... <pout>)