An odd question perhaps but as I translate my plethora of ARL-44 and Black Prince measurements into drawings (as a first step to then rendering them in Blender to make sure everything works together) I have been laboriously doing drawings of components on graph paper. which both indicates I'm old and kinda dumb as there has to be a way to do this on the computer. Is there freeware out there that would give the grid and maybe show angles between lines and relative length (pixel counts would be fine)? This doing rise over run and measuring with a physical ruler is for the birds. . .

Inkscape is a pretty decent vector program with quite a few utilities http://www.inkscape.org/en/ It's not a technical program, but should do the trick. If you want something CADish, try Sketchup. The free version is kind of basic, but has its uses too. http://www.sketchup.com/

There will be a learning curve with both of course, but you can get the hang of them fairly quickly for basic stuff and tutorials can be found.

Kimmo

Hi Matt,

Corel Draw was designed particularly for your purpose. Get an old version (7, 8, 9, whatever). Although no free- or shareware, the old versions should be available for free or almost nothing. It already contains everything you need. I use it for my decals and it works just fine.
But...as Kimmo mentioned...heed the learning curve.

successful trying!
Michael

I use Google SketchUp. It's a simple 3d CAD program but you can draw 2d shapes with it fine. It's also free, there are plenty of tutorials, and I find it easier to use than blender. Plus you could do your blueprints and modeling all in one program.

I cheat and just find blueprints on the web, scale them in SketchUp and just trace the lines. I could probably make a little tutorial on how to use SketchUp for blueprints if you're curious.

Now that would be handy as hell! Please think about the tutorial.

Mike

Reading between the lines, I'm guessing you are just starting to expose yourself to drafting or modeling software. This makes a big difference to your choice. There are a number of clones and attempts at clones of the fully featured CAD systems that professional draftsmen use, but I wouldn't recommend them to a casual user. Very steep learning curve! Instead, I would also weight in behind the recommendation of Sketchup

I've used Sketchup and found it easy to pick up. It has a wealth of online tutorials. My son taught himself Sketchup and spent many a happy hour creating an imaginary world with it. He got into this when he was 9 or 10 years old, and even though he's a bright kid, this says a lot about the thought that went into the design of Sketchup. (He's since seen the light, and is now building real models, although I still have to convince him that armour is more interesting than WW2 RAF aircraft)

As an alternative, you might take a look at Autodesk 123D. This is also free software. Don't be put off because this comes from the same stable as AutoCAD (about as heavy-weight and hard to learn as they come). 123D also takes a novel approach to its user interface and was designed from the ground up for the non-professional user.

You can do that in pretty much any program these days as well. I import stuff into Inkscape all the time and trace or do bitmap traces (converting jpegs into lines and so on for the curious). The thing I don't like about the free version of Sketchup is that the neat stuff isn't there and it's kinda clunky to use. It is an interesting thing to play with though, I planned out the interior for a Pz IV with it.



Kimmo

As an engineer I work in AutoCAD. As stated here by others, if you are just learning, that is not the place to start. Start simple as possible, free ware if you find it. Whatever you use, if you can save your drawings in .dxf format, then as you move up most all programs can red the .dxf ... known as the drawing exchange format.

Rounds Complete!!

Yea, just handy to do in SU sometimes since you can model right off of it. SU does get clunky once you start doing complex angles and the like, and it's damn near hopeless for any sort of organic modeling.



Typed one up. Real basic stuff, covers drawing lines and making reference angles to help answer the OPs question. Will post it up tomorrow morning

If it's well received I'll do one for printing blueprints, and loading up blueprints. But for now, bed time.

Thanks everyone. I am sort of ok with Blender but it doesn't seem to lend itself to exact lengths and angles, hence the alternate method to make my own 6views and then import them in for compiling them into a render to make sure I get the various angles right.

Yes please, I don't use sketchup often enough to actually remember how to do stuff!!

The neat stuff that is hidden in SketchUp is really only CAD import/export. As for no organic modelling in SU, there is a ton of plugins made by the SU community that let you do that, I make ship hulls using plugin that can make a 'skin' from 4 connected curves or make a whole or a part of a hull shell using theorhetical lines (set of sections of the hull shape).

Heck, I've even made a tyre and a set of rims for Zvezda's Mercedes L4500A in Sketchup that I was later able to print in 3D, there is even plugin that checks models validity for 3D printing. The tyre sidewal came out lacking any detail, but only due to lack of any reference photos or drawings of sidewall embossing.

For 2d drafting, one of the best options around is Draftsight. It is totally free, I think a Dassaults way of shooting Autodesk with its AutoCAD in the knee. It does everything AutoCAD LT does, maybe even more and is way easier on the resources. Also even most of the shortcuts are the same and used same way as in AutoCAD so starting using it if you work with ACAD is a breeze.

Cheers,
Greg

Which plugins do you use? All I've got is a gear drawer and an .stl exporter.

Anyways, first tutorial as promised.

First things first, go download the latest free version of SketchUp https://www.sketchup.com/. Install it and start it up. Now I forget what the default template is when you start up, but you might see a drawing of a lady standing near the origin. A template is just a blank page with some units settings (there's a template for inches, for millimeters, etc... Allows you to load up a the program without setting units every time).


So before we start drawing we're going to want to change the template to something more suitable for blueprints. On the header bar go to 'Window' -> 'Preferences.' A dialogue box opens up. Select template from the list on the left. Scroll down until you see "Product Design and Wood..." under the title it'll tell you which units the template uses. There is one for inches and one for millimeters. Select whichever one you want to work with and click 'ok.' You'll notice nothing changed... You need to restart SketchUp for the template to change, so go ahead and do that.


Now you're ready to start drawing. For this little example we'll draw a simple octagon. You'll learn how to use the protractor tool, and the line tool. Up top you'll see a pencil icon, if it's not already selected click it. Now move your mouse over the origin (where all three axes intersect), once you see a yellow circle click the mouse. Now you can jiggle your mouse around and see a line extending from the origin to your pointer.


Move your mouse along the dotted red axis, you'll notice it 'snaps' to the axis and the line turns red. In the bottom right corner you'll see the length of your line, now keeping the line on the red axis, type in 500 and hit enter (I'm working in mm). Now you have a line 500mm long in the -x direction. Fun fun. Hit esc, we're going to play with the protractor now.


If you don't see a protractor icon, go to 'Tools' then work your way down to protractor and click it. Now there's a big blue circle attached to your mouse, bring it to the end of the line you just drew, it'll snap to the end and you'll see a little green circle at the end of the line. Click once, now you'll see the circle stays on the end point, but spins around when you move the mouse. This is because SketchUp wants to know what the angle will be measured off of. Move your mouse along the -x red axis (left from the line) and click anywhere along there. Now you can enter the angle, type in 45 (you'll see in the bottom right what you've typed) and hit enter. Now you've got a 45 degree dotted reference line. No more rise over run!


Go back to the line tool, click the end point of your first line and drag the mouse along the dotted line to make sure it's snapped to it, type in 500 and hit enter. Repeat this process until you've done all 8 sides, once completed it should look something like this,


You can delete those dotted lines once you're done with them too. Just click them (they turn blue) and hit the delete key.
So that's the very basics of drawing in SketchUp. You can make lines of a specific length, and angles to whatever degree you want. Play with circles and arcs a bit and soon you'll be able to make any blueprint you want. Watch a bunch of videos on this too, there's probably one for everything I just covered and more.

Next up I'll talk about using existing blueprints as guides (from scans or the web), and printing out blueprints in the scale you drew them in.

[quote]
Yea, just handy to do in SU sometimes since you can model right off of it. SU does get clunky once you start doing complex angles and the like, and it's damn near hopeless for any sort of organic modeling.[quote]

The thing that drives me mad is the way they've designed the alignment functions. I had a hell of a time aligning all the bins and various bits and bobs in the correct plane and to the correct reference items. I can't for the life of me understand why they don't have a basic "align with" option etc, unless they've recently added one. This is a bit of a pet peeve with all software, everybody tries to re-invent the wheel and ignores what has worked well (or not well) with other programs in terms of menus and user interface. Sort of like Dragon instructions; you wonder if a user was actually involved in testing or not.

Kimmo