Printing Sectiontools Array full scale? Possible?

I’ve been wood and clay for a long time. This is my first venture into digital 3D design. It is necessary to section a vehicle body 201"L X 22"W x 34"H into sections 8" apart and have these sections printed full scale, as in “blueprinting”, on a large format printer. The paper templates then get glued to 1/2" MDF and cut out with a jig saw. I am aware of the benefits of CNC but no one in this area (southern NM) knows what a CNC router is. So a jig saw it is! If you have seen a Bonneville Streamliner for two wheels then you can picture the project. I have searched this forum but have not come up with anything similar. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Jim

Hi Jim,

The way I would generate 1/2" fitting sections would be like so:

here is the example file: SectionPrinciple.3dm(202.8 KB)

Next you need to get those sections out of Rhino for printing.

Best would be to rotate them to lay them flat on the XY plane and space them.
Check what file format the printing service wants/accepts and their max paper size.
Next you can export or print to pdf the separate sections.

note: ALWAYS check if the printouts are the correct size/scale (in both vertical and horizontal direction)
for these type of jobs I place reference lines of known length on the prints that I can measure to check the correct size.

HTH
-Willem

Willem, thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I’ve tried your workflow several times and it has worked perfectly every time. The only bug is likely due to my experience level of three days. When dimensioning the contours I have been unable to get the dimensions to snap to the contour. Thanks again.

Great!

Drop in when you run into any other problem, this is a great community eager to help out.

-Willem

This is exactly what I am trying to do for a friend. I am brand new to Rhino (and all 3d software). I have been trying for days to figure this out. I just found this old post and have not had time to study it. So far I do not understand the steps. I have been playing with section tools and Rhino 5 but have not gotten very far other than section array and then I hit a blank wall . If anyone knows of a video of step by step to do this or anymore info that might help me understand how to do this I will be very grateful. A video from a phone, phone call or text would be a huge help.

Have you tried the contour command as in the post above? It asks for a start point, a direction, and spacing. That should give you the curves that you need.

Thanks Willem, I need to read more on Rhino to understand what I am looking at… I am very new to Rhino (about 8 hours playing with it). Maybe it will become clear to me after I study each step. It is over my head but maybe I will see the light. Every bit of advice helps. I know it is painful for the experienced users to go over the basic steps with newbies, but we are very appreciative of your efforts. I will now go study how to do each step that is posted above.
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