Hulls is a great boat design program that is easy to learn and hard to master, but it’s grand fun to be able to design your own canoe or kayak, and then be able to build one. You can see some designs here. The main question I get from people downloading my designs is, how do you get the panels layout numbers. Here’s how:

The files I posted are not the layout plans for the plywood sheets that you will be cutting, but, luckily, Hulls has a program that will layout the plywood sheets for you. It is under the “Patterns,” and is called “Nesting.” Here is the way to get to the point where you can layout the patterns you will need to cut:

1. Open the kayak file into Hulls.
2. Go to “File,” and click “Clear Old Patterns.”
3. Save the kayak file again.
4. Go to “Patterns,” and click “Nesting.”
5. I like to click “Wide View”
6. Notice the scrolling box. Scroll down to “chine1.uc,” and click it. This will place the shape of the bottom chine onto the three sheets of plywood.
7. Then do the same for “chine2.uc.” Move these until you are happy with how they lay on the plywood.
8. Hit “Save.”
9. Hit “Okay.” This will bring up the notepad with a set of layout points for the panels. You plot these on the plywood and then use a batten to give you the curves.

Note: By default, Hulls lays out the panels over three sheets of plywood, if you are planning on scarfing all your plywood together and then laying out the panels, you should change the size of the sheet before you generate the layout points. So before step 8, change the numbers in sheet to equal 48 x 250.

There it is.