:Great tips, Mick. Very helpful. A couple of questions:

:a. How do you export to markers? (I've always wanted this feature and thought
:of requesting it.)

export offsets to textfile. In the textfile, delete everything except the control curves at the end of the file, add appropriate unit prefix and eof and read/import back in as markers.

:/b. Do you have a scan of a pencil sketch that you can post? If not, I'm
:curious about how you do it? In 3D?

well, I have a couple of quadrillion of those, but I just draw what I know (or think I do) and then sketch to get whatever I don’t know what the heck i/m doing. Like the simplest is a sideview, next would be a top or bottom view and next would be sections or form view. And overlay those or whichever one yr comfortable with on the appropriate freeship view - I mostly do it by looking at my sketch because all the other views will add or change areas that I maybe wasn’t quite as right as I was sure of, heh heh.

:c. On "facetious" in freeship, the uppermost line has a lot of control points
:on it. Are these connected to edges that will run across the panels eventually
:or just there to help shape the panel and not connected up? Does that make
: sense?

Makes total sense. The facetious freeship dwg is just for fun and I had already made a real yak as well as a ¼ full size model of a revised approach. The full size yak was built from dwgs in a 2d cad program by and the much later model was built from a 3d program (not freeship) that can produce plates. However, if I was to get serious about the freeship dwg, all points would be connected across the panels big time. And the control point spacing would be a little bit better than the semi haphazard placement you see.

And some hint additions to the previous post:

Expanding on point #4:

:4)Use the curvature analysis as much as possible when adding points. Realize
: that every point added changes to the real shape regardless if the control
:point is locked and fixed - this is where reading back the pic of the previous
: shape or marker of the previous shape will help retain something similar to
:the original shape.

One of the really unfortunate aspects of freeship, is that if you intersect a new deck panel with ANY part of the gunwale (or any other surface edge), that intersection point now fixes the actual gunwale to that exact location rather than leaving the gunwale curve as it was originally drawn ie the gunwale will move outward and that point will be a bump. Not only that, but the curvature analysis tool is now useless as the curvature is always shown at 0 at endpts and intersections. This is where the previous screenshot or markers come into play as you now have to visually estimate whether you have good shape or no.
(So in the freeship dwg of surfeit below, wherever one of the rear ‘abdomen’ panels intersects a front ‘wing’ panel, the curvature continuity cannot be checked and I have to draw by eye from what I see on the screen. That and other geometric reasons are why freeship will never be other than a quick (but useful) sketch medium for what I do. You can see how ridiculous the analysis tool is on the curve shown)

And sorry, i forgot maybe one of the more important conceptual hints that come into play when adding extra stuff like decks, etc.:

9) when you draw something new in freeship, even tho’ it looks like there are
lines that are being added, in fact the basic drawing element is a surface.

You do NOT edit or draw lines or points that have shape meaning. You DO
edit surfaces and draw with surfaces or surface characteristics.
So if you want to add something to a surface edge, you can either extrude one part of the surface, subdivide the existing surface and move the new corners to different locations, or add a point in space and highlight 2 endpts of an existing line and make a new surface using them all (yr not restricted to 3 pts to make the surface).

I always have to drill in my head that you draw and edit with surfaces.

Anyway, maybe these are notions that may help.
mick