Guide to guitarbuilding (bèta)

Tutorial: Making top-down guitar plans using TurboCAD

2011-02-06 20:02:54 guitarbuild

Welcome to a simple guide on how to make plans for guitars using turboCAD.
In this tutorial I presume you have: a PC, the internet, turboCAD (can be got free, in the downloads
section) . Step one is to get a top down pic of the guitar you want to make the plan of. Find it wherever you
want. Usually the guitar company’s website is a good place to start. Make sure the image is saved as a
.bmp file. While you’re on the company’s site find out the scale length of the instrument.
Now Open turboCAD. Select new>new from template. Now choose whether you want to work in metric or
imperial measurements. Click ok, and a blank page with a grid on it appears. Now click Insert>picture.
Find your top down pic and click OK. The image appears on the grid. You can zoom in/out if the image is
really big/small, using the zoom tool, located on the top toolbar.
Select the straight line tool, on the left hand toolbar. Click at the nut to start a line. You can now move the
mouse around without holding down the button like you have to in ms paint for example. Note that down at
the bottom of the screen there are 2 boxes saying length and angle. These values change as you move
the mouse. Use the line to measure from the nut to where you think the “intonation line” is on the bridge
(the line that was used to determine bridge position; the end of the scale, without any compensation). You
can hit ESC to cancel drawing the line once you have the measurement; or click the second point on the
line, then hit ALT+F to stop drawing, and leave the line on the page.
Now use this measurement to see how much you need to scale the picture. For example, if the scale
length of the guitar was 635mm and the line I’ve measured was 450mm long: 635 / 450 = 1.411 now
select the pic, by holding down the left mouse button and dragging over it. Down at the bottom, where the
length and angle boxes were earlier, there is now 5 boxes: scale X, scale Y, size X, size Y, rotation. We
are only interested in the first 2. In scale X enter the amount you need to scale the picture (using my
example, 1.411).
Click on scale Y (DO NOT PRESS RETURN) and enter the same number again. Now press RETURN
and the pic will resize. You can check the pic is now the right size by measuring the scale length again.
Now using the straight and curved line tools (left hand toolbar) you can draw around the image. You can
also mark rough positions of pickups and controls. When you’re done drawing, select the image (make
sure you don’t select anything else) and press delete. You are left with a rough outline of the guitar shape.
Now you should redraw the neck accurately by: drawing a centre line through the guitar drawing a line for
the width at nut drawing a line for the width at last fret connecting both lines up, to make a perfect
fingerboard now measure from the nut exactly the scale length and make a line for the bridge. At this point
I would select all the parts of the neck, and the bridge marking (use SHIFT+Click to select more than one
thing) and press the Group button, on the left hand toolbar. Now if you move the neck the bridge position
will move too, so that there is always the right length between nut and bridge.
By now you should have something that looks like a pretty good guitar plan. You can mark on
pickup/control/fret position if you want. And that pretty much ends the tutorial. You can print out parts or
your entire plan to make templates. But that’s a whole other tutorial on its own.
I hope this helps people wanting plans. Any questions just ask in the forum. I’d much rather answer
questions on how to use turboCAD than “can anyone draw me [insert guitar name]?”

(Original tutorial by: Kahti)