Rocksim custom fin question

[RandyM]

Does anyone know if you can draw a custom fin in another program like Corel Draw and save it in a way that Rocksim can open or import it? I'm using Rocksim 7 and the custom fin design leave a lot to be desired.

 

[luke strawalker]

Does anyone know if you can draw a custom fin in another program like Corel Draw and save it in a way that Rocksim can open or import it? I'm using Rocksim 7 and the custom fin design leave a lot to be desired.

Your best bet would be to email Tim Van Milligan over at Apogee. He can give you all the information firsthand, and if he doesn't know he can find out from the programmer. I had some problems with RockSim and Tim was very helpful.

I would tend to think that it would be possible, since part of the problem I was having was Rocksim not wanting to print out the fin templates (all the others printed fine, just no fins for some reason) and Tim explained the 'export' feature to me was so that Rocksim could send templates to external programs like Corel Draw. I would ASSume that the process would work in reverse, but I'm not sure of it and certainly wouldn't know all the tricks. Tim's your best bet... Good luck! OL JR

 

[Pat Butler]

My guess is that you could probably import fin points, but the problem would be having your origination program (let's say CorelDraw) convert your drawing into a point set. Unless you are coming from a CAD type program then you'll probably have to use something like the grid drawing function in Corel Draw to calculate your own points manually. Probably not any easier than using RockSim to start with.

 

[Pantherjon]

I have a question also relating to custom fin..How do you do fins with curved edges? Other then making umpteen many points is there a way to do that?

Also, when making a custom fin set how can one make the point map bigger? When I try to do a custom fin set it comes up as a 2"x2" graph and in order for me to make it bigger I have to click on 'show points' and manually input the X and Y coordinates for the points-which I find to be kind of a pain..

 

[zog43editor]

You enter umpteen million points, or as many as you want in order to get the shape close enough to what you are looking for.


Not sure what you mean making the point map bigger? THere are zoom controls that let you move it in an out- zoom out and you see everything, but the grid gets tiny. Zoom in and you see the grids larger but you don't see the whole fin. There are also preference settings for the size of the grids. Maybe a screenshot of what you are talking about?


I find that using the show points and entering the positions to be the best way to make scaled up or down fins from a known source. And if you can come up with an x,y plot of a fin shape you want to do on graph paper, it's a lot faster to enter it in that way than to draw all the points on the grid in RS.


I just looked at one of th RKT files and here's the section that has to do with the points for the Estes Sprint:
-PointList-38.1,0|35.56,11.176|33.02,22.352|30.48,30.48|27.94,37.084|25.4,42.418|22.86,46.228|20.32,49.022|17.78,50.8|15.2054,52.07|12.6658,52.5526|10.1263,51.5874|7.62,48.768|5.08,40.64|3.5306,33.6551|2.54,25.4|1.23783,13.3387|0,0|-/PointList-

So it would be easy enough to build a rocket with a very simple 4 point custom fin and then edit the PointList section to replace the fin shape. Not sure how any of the rest of the stuff in the fin section of the file would be affected though- you may have to open thte file in RS to let it recalculate that before you try any simulations.

 

[Pat Butler]

When you are in the window to plot your points it's easy to miss the horizontal page divider that can be moved downward to enlarge the plotting area view. The divider is right under the "Calculated Component Mass" field.

For curved fins, see the Chamfer icon above the point grid. That's the best way to do it evenly.