The traditional way to build a boat is to start off by drawing the lines full sized on the floor . This is called lofting . The purpose of lofting is to enlarge and correct any minute errors that happen in a small scale drawing where the width of a pencil line on the scale drawing would translate into about half an inch on the full size Boat . The beauty of a computer design is that the width of the pencil line is zero , and the lines can be expanded without distortion .
In the past the majority of the shop floor would be covered with a huge drawing board to loft the lines of a boat . Today I fair the lines in the computer , and plot out full size drawings of the component parts . This is a tremendous saving in time , shop space , and my knees ( because I no longer have to crawl around a drawing on my hands and knees erasing thirty foot long lines
The most recent stage in the evolution of boat building has been the addition of a Computer controlled router . Now instead of tracing the large drawing onto the wood , cutting out the wood and smoothing it with a hand plane , the frame parts are cut to within.005" accuracy on the CNC router.
