Specs & measurements

The sidebar shows length, width and thickness continuously as you edit, along with nose and tail measurements at the standard stations (12″ and 24″ from each end) and the wide point. Clicking the headline dimensions copies them to the clipboard.

These are computed in a background worker, so dragging a control point never stutters while the numbers catch up.

The readout is written in four bands — Nose, Center, Tail and Overall — and each one collapses. Overall starts open; the other three start shut, with the number that band is usually consulted for on its header, so the whole readout fits a laptop screen without scrolling. Open as many as you want; the choice is remembered.

Specs has its own tab, so it is always one click away, and the headline dimensions and volume stay on the tab strip even when the panel is folded away — the numbers you check most are never more than a glance from wherever you are working.

Volume is integrated from the actual surface rather than estimated from a formula, and it accounts for a concave tail if the outline has one. It is always shown in litres, to one decimal place (27.4L) — which is how boards are specified everywhere, regardless of whether you work in inches or millimetres.

The integration refines adaptively until the result stops changing, instead of using a fixed number of slices — so a longboard and a fish are both accurate, rather than one being accurate and the other approximate.

The unit selector in the toolbar switches every length in the interface at once — millimetres, centimetres, inches, or feet and inches with fractions. Nothing is shown in a fixed unit, and exports follow the same selection.

Beside it, x-axis / o/curve chooses how positions along the board are measured: straight from the tail, or over the bottom curve, the way a tape laid along the stringer reads. On o/curve the cursor position, cross-section positions (typed and dragged), the wide point and the centre of mass are measured over the curve and marked o/c. The 12" and 24" stations, control points and fins stay straight-line, and the board itself never moves.

Volume is the deliberate exception: always litres.

An estimate of the finished board's weight from its volume, the foam type and the glassing schedule you pick. It is a planning figure — useful for comparing two designs, not a promise about the board that comes out of the glassing bay.

Grid & guides

Scale reference and station lines.

Curvature comb

Quills drawn normal to every edited curve in the outline, rocker and cross-section views, longer where the curve bends tighter. This is the fastest way to find a flat spot in a rail that looks fine to the eye. How to read it: a smooth envelope along the quill tips means the curvature flows smoothly; a step in the envelope at a control point is a sudden change in curvature there; quills shrinking to the curve are a flat spot. Each comb stays outside the board — deck quills above the deck, bottom quills below the bottom, outline quills away from the stringer — so it never cuts through the foam. Where a curve turns from convex to concave (a deck flowing into a kicked nose, a concave running into the rail) a small ring on the curve marks the inflection. Curves in one view share a scale (deck and bottom quills compare directly); the tightest spots, such as a pinched nose tip, are capped so they do not shrink the rest of the comb.

Volume distribution

How volume is spread along the length — where the board carries its float.

Load a second board as a reference and it is drawn dashed underneath the one you are editing, in every view, with its specs shown alongside yours. The cross-section ghost is interpolated to whatever station you are looking at, so the comparison is like-for-like.

This is the practical way to answer "what did I actually change from the one that worked".