@dave r said:

The way they were planked (planks before frames on boats like that) there was a sort of hollow that created a vortex. It's a little like the vortex that comes off the wingtips on airplanes. This apparently improved the way the boats tracked and also helped reduce drag and increase speed.

Didn't know about that. Found this...

"At the bow and the stern builders were able to create hollow sections, or compound bends, at the waterline making the entry point very fine." ????

@dave r said:

Bob, that's a nice Viking boat. Is it modeled after a specific historical example? Did you shape the hull with the hollows near the stern?

Does that answer your question? Not sure what you mean. Based on the Oseberg ship. Looks cool, but not for the ocean. A replica sank twice in moderate weather.

Had the same problem with my Viking boat. Made a .png side view with planks drawn in and then projected onto the hull. Not too bad from a distance.

Very useful...this one and the others. Just made a donation.

Any tips about how to make a door and window schedule? Tried inserting an .rtf file which is maybe okay until I try to edit the text in Layout at which time the Text palette looks like a pinball machine for thirty seconds or so before making the change. Tried copy and paste into a text box...same strange behavior. Seems to be no way to insert a table. Did a screen capture of the table from the word processor, but that makes a bigger file. Windows 8, i7 Quad 3.6GHz; 16gb ram; Quadro 600; Intel 335 SSD.

Edit: Insert an .rtf, work on it more in WP, insert the updated file, Layout retains the old one. Must Save as... with a new name to insert the update.

I've lost count of how many CAD programs I've tried over the years hoping to find a good layout tool to go with Sketchup. Just recently TigerCAD, TurboCAD again after many years, DoubleCAD, FelixCAD. Bottom line I think DraftSight is it. I thought it was 2D at first, but scanning the manual it is actually 2.5D! and it opened a 12mb dxf model from SU perfectly with layers. It makes nice vector PDFs and .dwgs that open well in other programs. UI is different and still figuring it out. Also imports images and you can reference external files. All the stuff required to do layouts and drafting. And it's free. DoubleCAD imports the skp model but you can't actually do anything with it, too clunky and slow. My two cents. I normally use ArchiCAD by the way.

EDIT: Update. Upon further review DoubleCAD isn't working out. Now, I'm export 2D drawings extracted from the model in a preliminary sheet layout in dxf. Then open in DraftSight to add images, Word docs, etc. No 2.5D, just 2D. One issue is although it prints to pdf very well, the file is 15mb! I found that printing an svg, open that in Inkscape and save as pdf makes great quality and 141kb. TurboCAD Designer also works for this, but not free, about $40.

I take that back. Re-figured everything, Sketchup is very close. NOAA's solar calculator gives the solar elevation here on Mar 21 at solar noon as 41.73 degrees. Sketchup, as near as I can measure, gives 42.003 degrees. I'm happy with that.

I looked up the angle of the sun at noon for a certain day at a certain location on the NOAA website. Then used Get Location for the same location and day at noon and using the shadow found the angle according to Sketchup. Sketchup as lower by about eight degrees. Can that be fixed or is it a bug?

First post here. Doing some tests with Layout. Thanks for the tip about setting the model res at 72! That speeded things up a lot. And I'm about to set line weight to .25. It is clunky compared with other high buck software, but usable. At 300 dpi the pdf for five pages was 31 mb. Still doable if you print a big set in small groups. Has anyone tried to produce a set of working drawings with Layout? Or is this in the future?

Edit: Actually can't find how to set lines to .25. .5 seems to be the lowest. Any ideas?