Advice - program with which to draw airliner decals?

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Advice - program with which to draw airliner decals?

Postby F-27pax » Mon Dec 25, 2017 6:34 pm

Can somebody suggest to me a simple but effective drawing program useful for making decals for airliners (and other civil aircraft). At the moment I'm thinking of making a model of VH-HSB, the Coles HS-125-700. The scheme is fairly simple and I could make it simply by masking, but I thought that I might also be an opportunity to have a go at making my own decals. Suggestions?
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Re: Advice - program with which to draw airliner decals?

Postby Cap'n Wannabe » Tue Dec 26, 2017 6:05 am

Use a vector-based program - that way, it's easy to scale your designs up or down without losing any fidelity.
Personally, I use Autocad to design the outlines, then import the dwg file into CorelDraw to finish them off, however, CorelDraw on its own will do the trick. (The only reason I use Autocad is because I've been drafting with it for the last 20 years..)
There's also Inkscape, which is free, whereas CorelDraw costs about $30/month to subscribe to.
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Re: Advice - program with which to draw airliner decals?

Postby F-27pax » Tue Dec 26, 2017 6:55 am

Thanks, I think I'll have a look at Inkscape, I don't feel like paying that much a month for something I'm not going to use very often, even though I use a lot of other Corel stuff.
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Re: Advice - program with which to draw airliner decals?

Postby Cap'n Wannabe » Tue Dec 26, 2017 8:27 am

The good thing about CorelDraw is you don't have to pay every month. My subscription is currently unpaid - next time I need it, I'll just renew it and away I go.
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Re: Advice - program with which to draw airliner decals?

Postby SpaceRanger » Thu Dec 28, 2017 12:59 am

Adobe Illustrator. Not cheap, unless you can find older editions on ebay, but it is the industry standard for vector art. There is also a CAD plug-in for it from CADTools.
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Re: Advice - program with which to draw airliner decals?

Postby Uros » Sat Jan 06, 2018 10:17 pm

Hi!
I'm using Inkscape. It's free and works just fine for me.
Cheers!
Uros
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