Add 3D layers: dishes, channels and deck concaves

What a layer is

A 3D layer is foam cut from or added to the board's bottom or deck over a stretch of the board. A concave dish under your front foot, four channels through the tail, a belly panel up the nose and a dished deck are all layers. They go on top of the board you drew. The slices you shaped stay as you drew them, so you can take a layer off, or change its numbers, without redrawing anything.

Open the editor's Slices tab and find 3D layers in the inspector. Pick a starting point from the list and press Add layer:

• Concave dish: a rounded dish cut into the bottom on the stringer.
• Double concave: two rounded concaves either side of the stringer.
• Channels: four flat-floored channels through the tail.
• Venturi: a wide, rounded concave either side, out toward the rails through the tail.
• Belly panel: a rounded panel added to the bottom, which reads as a soft vee.
• Deck concave: a rounded dish cut into the deck.
• Deck dome: a rounded panel added to the deck.
• Deck rails: a raised band along each side of the deck.
• Layer: a plain starting point to make your own.

The bottom contour's Set all can also write a double concave or a belly whose depth changes along the board, from a tail, a centre and a nose depth. See Read the bottom and the float.

The numbers

Every layer has a name and these settings. Sizes and positions are in your unit, and a typed unit wins, so "40 mm" on an inch board means 40 mm.

• Bottom or Deck, and Cut or Add. A cut on the bottom raises the bottom into the board; an add lowers it. A cut on the deck lowers the deck.
• Round or Flat floor. A round layer is a smooth bowl across its width. A flat-floored one has a floor and walls, as a channel does; Walls sets how wide each wall is.
• On the stringer, 2, 4 or 6 strips. Strips come in mirrored pairs, Spacing apart centre to centre.

A layer that follows the outline scales with the board: its spacing, width and walls are exactly the numbers you type at the middle of its stretch, and they close in toward the nose and the tail as the board narrows, so a tip-to-tip double concave or a dish keeps its place across the bottom instead of standing outside a narrow nose. A layer that runs parallel to the stringer keeps its numbers everywhere: its strips run straight, at a constant distance from the stringer, and where the outline narrows past a strip it simply runs out through the rail. Production channel bottoms are cut the second way: on the boards we measured, each channel's centre line holds a constant distance from the stringer along its whole run while the board widens around it, and the outer pair runs out through the rail toward the tail. The Channels tool writes its layer parallel; the presets and Set all follow the outline.

• From and To: where the layer starts and ends, measured from the tail.
• Depth and Width.
• Run in and Run out: how far the layer takes to reach its full depth at each end. Set one to 0 and the layer runs out of that end of the board at full depth, right to the tip.
• Plan: Follows the outline, or Parallel to the stringer. See below.
• Density, for an added layer only: the material's own weight in kg/m³, for a layer that is not foam. Leave it empty for foam.

Three rules keep the board a board. A layer fades out before it reaches the rail, so the rail stays as you drew it. It never goes deeper than 40% of the board's thickness at any spot. And a layer that fades in or out stays 25 mm clear of the nose and the tail; only a run you set to 0 takes it right to the tip.

Reading it back

The 3D view, the volume and the station readouts all read the board with its layers. The section header shows how much volume the layers take away or add. On the Slices tab, a station a layer reaches draws the section as the layers cut it, in your accent colour, over the slice you shaped; the slice's own points stay where they are and are still the ones you drag.

A board shown from its imported 3D model, rather than lofted from its curves, shows that model in the 3D view, so its layers appear in the readouts, the volume and the exports but not in that view. A station you have not shaped by hand reads its layers' own shape: a dish reads as a concave of its depth, channels as channels. A station you did shape reads its own bottom with the layers cut in.

The foam weight counts an added layer's own density, so a heavier insert weighs what it is made of.

The spec sheet, the design page and the share page list every layer in words, as in "Concave dish · bottom · cut 5 mm · 260 mm wide · 1'11" to 4'7"". Resizing a board scales its layers with it.

Exports

Every export that is built from the board's sections carries the layers: the 3D files, the DXF's slices and the AkuShaper file. The DXF also draws each layer's footprint on the plan, on a layer of its own named FEATURE_1, FEATURE_2 and so on, with its name, what it does and how deep it goes. The Shape3d file writes no layers of its own: a shallow dish shows in its five-point slices, and channels do not travel to Shape3d.

Boards attached to a file

Layers work on a board that is still attached to the file it was imported from. They go on over the file's own sections, so you can add a dish or channels without detaching the board and without changing the shape you imported.