It all starts with planning. It might be tempting to rush though the planning stage, but don't give in! An extra few minutes spent at this stage can save you countless hours later during construction. Extra care at this stage makes all the other stages go easier. Ok Here we go!
Assuming you have already picked a subject of your own but for our purposes I will discuss the design of a sport scale model. I am a huge fan of CAD or computer aided drawing. I would highly recommend this route if you have access to a home computer. There are quite a few different CAD software versions on the market at different price points. Find one you like but do a little comparison shopping first. I use a version that can allow me to draw in 3 dimensions or 3D, but a good 2D program will do fine. The advantages over pencil and paper are too many to count or discuss.
One of the first things I like to do is to go ahead and do a rough drawing of the aircraft profile- usually a side and top view is enough. I like to use scanned images or 3-view drawings to begin if I'm working on a scale model. once I have a good image to work from I will import that same image to my CAD program. Here is where the "layer" feature of the CAD software is helpful. I begin by "digitizing" tracing the outline and other important shapes of the subject. The software will allow me to put the image and my tracing on different layers. Once I finish my tracing I may delete or hide the layer with my original image so I can see my tracing better. My tracing is now my scale outline for the model I want to build and I can manipulate it to suit my needs. Now we need to determine the approximate size of the model we want- wingspan, fuselage length, etc. Here is where CAD once again rules. You can pick out two different points on your drawing (original tracing) and input any size you would like. This makes scaling drawings up or down a breeze.
Up until now, we haven't needed to get into any math or equations. Now it's time to break out the pencil and paper and do a few simple calculations.
