Locating in Points Space

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Locating in Points Space - page 1

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Locating in points space
In the following tutorials you will be learning how to use a series of points in space to create an illustration. The work will be based on creating a WWII aircraft – the C-47 Skytrain. The information available to me in preparing these tutorials consisted of copies of a few pages of the manuals and no engineering drawings. While this will make no difference in learning how to use this drawing system, please understand that things like the design of the ribs and stringers will be pure fiction. This drawing system was known as lofting. Lofting is used to develop complex curved surfaces. Back in the "old days", draftsmen worked on their hands and knees in the loft of the engineering building. Even though modern CAD programs have eliminated the need to "Loft" most of the practices and terms established back than still are used. A bit of history about our project subject: The Douglas C-47 was developed from the DC-3. In 1940 the United States Army ordered the aircraft in large numbers. The Skytrain was also known as the "gooney bird" and a Vietnam era gun ship version acquired the moniker "puff the magic dragon". These durable aircraft continue to fly today.

To demonstrate how this will work: Activate the Symbol Roll-up and choose the "An Isometric Evaluation Library (If you own Tech Drawing Tools or Isometric Tools choose "Iso Basics #40). Set the size to 2.155 inches and drag symbol 41 onto the screen. We could now use this cube to locate a point that was from the lower left corner, about 1 inch up, 1 inch to the right and 1 inch back (as shown by the green dot at the beginning a red line plot and the at the end, a blue dot). Turn on snap to objects. Snap a little green circle to the lower left corner of the corner. Draw the line and choose a red outline. Snap a little blue circle to the end of the line.

Delete the cube and the red line. The points (The cube and line are shown as a ghost.) are still there properly located in space although without a reference point there is no way to tell. Obviously, the cube was a quick easy way of finding a point in 3D space. Equally obvious is that this is not a real world solution. The illustration below shows the solution. With the "lofting" solution you are simply supplied an address. To replace the cube the address would be WL 1.00, BL 1.00 and STA 1.00.

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