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estebanana -> RE: Digitizing guitar plans (Nov. 7 2016 1:08:14)
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quote:
Stephen, wouldn't a CAD file also be printable? Do you have another recommendation for a specific file format type that works well for scanning an image and later printing it to scale? Maybe Adobe Illustrator??
CAD is type drawing or rendering program, they can by formatted in many ways for printing. CAD is great, but to me not the most ideal for guitar plans. Although professionally prepared plans from CAD programs are great. I tend to work from drawings I have made myself and from pencil drawings and photos other people have made.
I suggest bypassing the computer, learn to draft plans with a pencil, compass, triangle and a T-square. Use the actual guitar as the object you draw around to establish the plantilla shape.
CAD programs take a half pattern of the plantilla and flip it along the vertical axis to get a bilaterally symmetrical plantilla. And in the process of rendering the shape of the half pattern lose some of the information that makes the plantilla unique by processing through the CAD program which makes curves out of tiny straight lines.
The pencil drawings are more nuanced and often more accurate to what the original instrument looked like or even feels like. CAD drawings are better for objects that will not be built on an intimate scale like a guitar. Or objects that are more about utility in function and are outlined for mass production.
I suggest sinking the time into learning to draft with pencils and then take the drawings to a blueprint shop with a big scanning bed and have the pencil drawing scanned so it can be saved on an external drive and then printed out on a large format printer. The good CAD program will cost more than the scanning in the wide bed scanner. And if you learn to draft by hand really well you can work in the field. In other words take your drafting and measuring tools out to other folks houses or even institutions that have guitar collections and draw any guitar you want.
Probably a better way to go is investing the money in various calipers and Hackliner gauge and good rulers and drawing with pencils; plans are only as useful as the accuracy of the lines. CAD charts can list all the numbers and look organized, but not convey nuance like a pencil drawing can. And photos of details to supplement the drawings and numbers are good.
To me the best photos, numbers and drawings to some extent also suggest an order of assembly. If you can convey that truth in a drawing then that is pretty advanced drafting. Drafting is a lost art and in many ways guitarmaking is also. They belong together.
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Where to get it done? Many companies are offer scanning services and you can mail your plan to them. They use scanning beds and special large format digital cameras- for example this company found by searching *large format scanning* https://www.bellevuefineart.com/fine-art-scanning-process/
Some post punk goth chick with pink hair and a biga$$ camera will photograph and save your digitized plan and send it back to you on a disk or an external drive. How fun is that?
You can also mount photos to your plan and the camera will pick them up with precision and the sheets can be printed out on good paper. So your plans cost a bit more, but deliver three or four times as much information. Good value.
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