The design started with a cut and paste mock-up of the instrument panel layout to allow a physical assessment of the visibilty within the cockpit. For the proper planning of the placement of the various gauges and instrument a commercially available instrument panel planning software (Panel Planner J Version 3) was used. The programme greatly helped in placing and spacing the instruments on the scale BearHawk instrument panel. The programme, with its built in data base, is also capable to generate the cutout templates for the various instruments chosen and its output can be saved as a CAD file for future laser cutting of the panel.
Note: To avoid others having the same bad experience it is of utmost importance that the programme generated CAD file is carefully checked for any errors. In the event, the first lasercut panel was found to have numerous errors, including under and over sized holes for the chosen instruments and random errors in the hole sizes for the mounting bolts. In my case, numerous 3 1/8" standard instrument holes were exactly this diameter instead of the recommended 3.16" to allow for manufacturing tolerance build-up, which would have required additional enlargement work. Other issues were unsightly oversized mounting holes mixed up with the standard 0.169" holes.
To avoid any further disappointments, the completed programme generated cut out template was first uploaded onto a CAD programme and then thoroughly checked for accuracy. The programme used for this purpose was "DraftSight' a freeware fully fledged CAD programme released by Dassault Systèmes.
Initial Mockup using pictures cut out and attached to the instrument panel
