I said: I always download free plans so I have as large a library as possible of designs to start from.

Perhaps I ought to add that I like to have lots of designs to refer to, not only as possible starting points, but also as things to compare evolving designs with, as a reality check. The design I've been evolving for a decade (and may start to build this year - it's about time...) is derived from a real inuit baidarka, but I keep looking at study drawings and the like form other baidarka-based designs to see if others have done something very different. The "reality check" I'm currently experiencing is that other designs seem to have the cockpit placed further aft than mine, even though my cockpit position already seems to place the paddler centre of gravity aft of the boat's centre of buoyancy. It's things like this that keep me nervous about my own design - what am I missing or miscalculating ? A plentiful supply of free designs enables me to compare them with each other and see if there is a similar variation between other examples that "ought" to be similar...

Plans we download or extract from books aren't just to build from - and having a wide variety is essential background info. No-one is going to pay $50-150 for each of fifty sets of plans just as background knowledge, so free plans are an essential part of the hobby. I've spent a lot of time extracting information from study drawings and 3d-models of boats whose full plans are *not* free, to increase the range of design comparisons I can do. Just because I spend a couple of days ripping offsets from someone's commercial design does not mean that I intend to reproduce their boat without paying ! It may be to test that the software I'm using on my own designs gets sensible answers starting from a well characterised and tested boat... If my software tells me that my cockpit is in the wrong place, I want to know if it says the cockpit is in the wrong place for a boat where I know it really is in the right place... then I can try to fix the software, not waste time trying to redesign the boat !!

Andy