I just came across this on a Yahoo luthier's list. It may be of interest to some members. The usual provisio - free isn't always worth what you pay
for it...
It is possible to produce some pretty fantastic (i.e. totally non authentic proportionally!) lute designs with this program - and few if any original
surviving lutes have bowls of semicircular section.
Nevertheless with further development (if that is planned), alternatively this might become a useful tool for analysing lutes or ouds (or oud like
instruments) depicted in the iconography - if the image could be incorporated as an overlay and its profile exactly traced and matched to the image.
I like the 3D rendering facility which again might be used to determine instrument profiles when depicted in perspective view in a painting (assuming
the rendering mimics vanishing point perspective).bulerias1981 - 3-26-2013 at 05:26 PM
I made this beautiful design with the program. Looks more like a balalaika!!!
Brian Prunka - 3-26-2013 at 05:37 PM
That's great, it looks much better than your last design. Can you put turquoise on it?ultragroove - 3-27-2013 at 08:56 AM
That's great, it looks much better than your last design. Can you put turquoise on it?
LOL!! (actually ROFL) )
I'm still trying to imagine how to actually play that thing as a normal two legged person with standard arm length. Nice try, bulerias. bulerias1981 - 3-27-2013 at 01:49 PM
The entire soundboard will be made from 300 joined pieces of turquoise!!Brian Prunka - 3-27-2013 at 06:55 PM
The entire soundboard will be made from 300 joined pieces of turquoise!!
That will sound great, I can't wait.SamirCanada - 3-28-2013 at 04:24 AM
AS long as they are 2.5 microns thick and have it in a nomex sandwish top you're fine.
Bruno Bengtsson - 5-30-2013 at 05:07 AM
Hallo
I am just trying the same CAD software as you used for your class narciso, I and have got as far as downloading the dxf file for the rib from their
site
Now I would like to make a card stencil from from which to cut out ribs on veneer for the bowl
I have only one standard A4 printer, so one page is too small for the whole rib and I need a way to split the printout across several pages.
Did you find a way to do this? I would be very grateful if you have a good suggestion. Thankyou
narciso - 6-11-2013 at 05:12 AM
Bruno, sorry I cant really advise as the scale wasn't too important for us, and our bowls weren't full sized. We just let the printer scale
automatically to fit on A4
I know some print shops have extra-wide roll printers capable of printing pdf formats bigger than A4. Probably a better bet than (if I have
understood) trying to split across multiple A4 ?
Incidentally, one thing I noticed though when converting from dxf to pdf was that you need to set the line width to a finite value. The line is too
thin to see otherwise jdowning - 2-23-2014 at 05:56 AM
This software has now been updated from the free version 1.6L (for Windows and Linux Ubuntu 12.04) - semicircular bowl section only to trial
evaluation version 1.8x for Windows - semicircular and elliptical bowl section.
I have interest in this software as a possible tool to help in my studies of early lute geometry so am in touch with the program developers to see
what else might be included in the program.
One very useful feature would be how air volume of the bowl changes with infinite changes in bowl geometry. Other CAD programs, no doubt, might
provide this feature but the 'learning curve' for me would be too steep and time consuming to pursue.
jdowning - 3-3-2014 at 11:43 AM
Program developer Nick Braun has added a calculated bowl volume facility to version 1.8x.
Go to the 'View' tab and enable 'Visualisation' to bring up the 3 dimension view. press 'V' on your keyboard and the calculated bowl volume will
appear in the status bar below the 3D window.
)