Wednesday 3 November 2010

Producing Drawings

After discovering SketchUp; a free 3D CAD program from Google; I have been dabbling with boat drawings.  I’m one of those impatient computer users who only reads instructions as a last resort.  As a consequence the first of my drawing turned out to be quite bad.  However, they did start to improve as I learned from my mistakes.

This is a drawing I produced of the bow area.  It’s not to scale as I don’t have any accurate dimensions to work from.  Nevertheless it does provide an indication of what we are trying to achieve in this part of the boat.

Bow section 

At the very front (the pointy bit is known as the bow) is a hatch which conceals the water intake point.  The entire bow section under the hatch forms the compartment for the potable water.

A flexible liner will be installed into the compartment to prevent the water being contaminated. Immediately behind the hatch is a short metal post on which the headlamp and horn will be mounted.  I’ve also specified wiring for a future bow camera be run to the post.

The rear portion of the bow consists of a cross over locker containing the batteries for the electric bow thruster.  The tube for the bow thruster is under the locker.  There are storage lockers on the port and starboard sides of the boat.  The port locker will actually be the diesel fuel storage tank for the stove in the saloon.  Finally, between the baseplate and the deck there a fourth storage compartment that can be accessed from a hatch in the deck.  This compartment is below the waterline.  There will be an automatic bilge pump in here to remove any water that might inadvertently enter.  All these lockers will have a cable unlocking mechanism operated from inside the boat.  We discarded the idea of padlocks as I’m so forgetful I am likely to misplace the keys.

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