You add stringers to your structure, either by drawing them in the Plan, Profile or Body Plan windows or by generating them automatically. A stringer is defined by a polyline of points, each of which lies in the surface of the design. When you add a point in one of the two dimensional views, Workshop will project the point through the surface and adjust the points coordinates so that it lies in the surface. Each stringer may lie wholly within one surface of the design, or it can run across a number of surfaces. You will usually find it easiest to have each stringer contained within one surface.

To add a stringer to a surface

Ø        Choose Add Stringer from the Stringer menu

The cursor will change to a cross

Ø        Click at the location of the first point in the stringer

Ø        Click at the locations of each of the following points along the stringer

Ø        Double click at the last point to finish adding the stringer.

Alternatively you can press Return or Enter after adding the last point to your stringer or right-click and select OK.

As you add each point, Workshop will place a marker on the surface underneath the point you add. The stringer will be fitted as close as possible to these markers.

Immediately after you have added your stringer, Workshop will calculate an approximate fit of the stringer shape. This is just to give you an idea of the shape of the stringer and to give you a curve to select to set other attributes. You will still need to use the Calc Stringer, Calc Selected Stringer or Calc All Parts commands to accurately calculate the final stringer shape.

You can repeat the above process for each stringer you wish to add to the hull.

The display of stringers and points is controlled using the Structure… dialog from the Display menu. You can turn on and off the display of stringer points, the net between stringer points, the stringer curves and the numbers of stringers using the check boxes in this dialog.