Good links, @kenhej! The duckworks site is a good one. Some of those small one sheet (+) plans are great.
Getting plans into CAD is getting easier with programs like Fusion 360 that allow one to take advantage of dimensioning parameters. If the plans include offsets, that is great. If the plans include measurements from a baseline, even better! Many of H. Payson’s plans (found here) have measurements from a baseline, made for the amateur builder to measure from a plywood sheet’s edge. In Fusion 360, I find that this works great, using one of the axis as that baseline.
If you have a hankering to do your own panel “unwrapping/unfolding” from a complex model, I would suggest some pretty good freeware programs out there:,
- Hulls, which is an old and very simple application for making boat hull chines is actually quite good in that you can unwrap and lay out chine panels onto virtual ply sheets! You can use this to design the chines, unwrap and then export the chines as DXF files to later massage in something like Fusion 360 (or not).
- Freeship (plus), is also an older program, but has a lot of neat analysis tools and can help you unwrap hulls portions to create panels you can export as DXF. This application can allow for more curvy forms than Hulls. PRO TIP: to unwrap panels, it is best to have each area as Layers and to also enable/check the ‘developable’ option within the Layers management dialog (slightly hidden).