Beiträge von Ola Helenius

Yes, I start out by by designing a multitude of curves running along the board in a program I have made myself that runs in MATLAB - a general mathematics program. For many of these, I first describe the curvature along the curve, then have the program calculate the actual curve for me. So I can have very exact control of curvature flows.

From this program I then export a special file that the open source program BOARDcad can read through a special add on written specifically for me by the developer of Boardcad. In Boardcad I might look at some sections and stuff, but never do any changes. Boardcad then exports an stp-file consisting of two nurbs surfaces (deck and bottom), that fx a standard cad software like Rhino can read. I typically check volume and some aspect of flow in Rhino. My builders than either take the rhino file, or have their router set up directly to work with Boardcad.

Nowhere in this process, I use standard splines. NURBS is a form of splines, but allow fully free modeling. And yes, I consider specific board design programs that works with more simple spline functions quite limited. But a good shaper chooses tools that work for them, sn obviously many shaper, fx in te surf business, make great work with software that would not be preferred by me.

Hi all, Simmer style shaper Ola Helenius here. My friend Christer Holm made a little video clip where I discuss my personal board shapes and show some sailing from my local spot. My own boards are all kind of odd and I use pretty unusual fin setups too, so maybe it can be interesting to watch for people interesting in board shaping.

I can read comments in German but prefer to answer in English