Dan Sawatzky’s Blog

New in EnRoute 6

I’ve had the chance to test drive EnRoute 6 for a while now and love it! There are a bunch of new things and many of the old things run better and faster than ever. One of my favourite things about the new software is that the dongle is now a thing of the past. This means you simply open the program and GO! Modern technology is a wonderful thing! There’s lots of new symmetric textures. Text can now be copied and pasted from other programs.  The fourth axis on my router is now fully supported.

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MultiCam plasma magic

Today, using our MultiCam CNC plasma cutter we cut the last large piece for theViking ships designed for Motiongate in Dubai. Over the last weeks Peter has created more than 60 precise files using EnRoute software. Hundreds of pieces have been cut from heavy steel plate. This complicated project would have been much, much harder to do any other way. We love our Multicam!

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Occasion Station

There is a second station for the train that travels around NEB’s Garden. It is called the Occasion Station. It is a fanciful and ornate creation that speaks of the formal English garden in which it rests.

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Designs for NEB’s

Design work continues on the NEB’s Fun World project. It will involve many different projects including miniature golf, a train, a micro brewery and much more. Over the next weeks I’ll be doing lots of drawings. As soon as the Viking ships for Dubai are done we’ll kick into making all of the ideas come to life.

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Dubai Viking ship progress

Since my last post showing the Viking ship frame we have made significant progress. The engineer required us to use heavy steel members with plenty of welding. The ship has to withstand lots of moving as we put it together, it travels to the galvanizer and also the long journey to Dubai in the middle east. To facilitate it’s removal from our (rather small) shop at to fit into the galvanizing vats it will break into six sections on each level.

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Designing with EnRoute

Almost any time I need to design something in scale EnRoute is my program of choice. The program can handle large scales without difficulty. I’ve designed entire theme parks using it. Currently we are in the preliminary stages of designing a new project

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Heavy duty steel!

We’ve been busy this week welding up the lower sections of the hull. The cutting files for the plate sections were all designed in EnRoute and cut on the MultiCam CNC plasma cutter. Even though there are many large pieces, they went together very quickly on account of the accuracy of the cuts. Three days into the assembly we are making good progress!

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A very big ship!

With the workshops now behind us we are full blast into building the Viking ships for the Motiongate project in Dubai. Between the workshops we kept the MultiCam CNC plasma cutter busy and cut through tons of steel plate. These custom cut pieces will form the shape of the hull at each level. They have been cleaned up and bevelled where they will be welded together.

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Time lapse of last Sculpture Magic Workshop

Time lapse of last Sculpture Magic Workshop

Through the years we have had numerous requests for a video of our workshops. We strongly believed that to properly experience a workshop you needed to be there, getting your hands dirty and engaging with us one on one. That belief hasn’t changed. But thanks to our good friend JD who attended our last workshop we did capture much of it in a time lapse video. Even this is but a quick glimpse for it was only one room of the workshop and didn’t include the meals, field trips or the things that happened outside

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