I am a newbie on this website, though I have been playing around with SketchUp for a while. I still don’t know a lot about it, but have some idea how much can be done with it.
My major interest is in boats rather than architecture and design. I would like to find out if it is possible, in SketchUp, to “straighten” a curved panel, the side of the boat, to get the flat shape of the panel.
Dories are really simple boats. Take a flat panel, bend it and tilt it at something 45° and you have the flare and sheer that makes a dory easy to build, cheap, capable of carrying lots of fish and above all, seaworthy.
The story is that I built a light displacement dory recently, working from offsets. Offsets are the X, Y, Z dimensions of the sheer and chine lines of a boat at regularly spaced stations. Traditionally frames are set up to these dimensions and the plywood attached over them.
Instead of this method I used “stitch and glue”. A sheet of plywood is cut in half lengthwise, and butted together using epoxy and fiberglass tape to give a 2’x16’ panel. Stations are marked and the height above the base line of the sheer and chine are measured off and cut out. Panels for both sides are wired together at the bow and transom, and then the bottom is stitched on. Thickened epoxy is put into the joints and covered with fiberglass tape. I used a 2x4, ripped lengthwise into four pieces for the gunwale sheer clamps. The bottom is fiberglassed for waterproofing and durability. One of these dories can be put together inside of two weeks of evenings, for less than $300. It is a good boat.
From the offsets I did my best, through trial and error as well as some long forgotten engineering drawing, to convert the offsets to the panel shape. It wasn’t too bad, but there are errors that I would like to eliminate.
I hope that SketchUp will let me get the dimensions correct.
Lonach34

NO 2 & Side Panel.skp