a scale starting point

[Tk421reporting]

I dont know about you guys but my morning just started with one of my neighbors frantically screaming at the top of her lungs...now nothing...

aaaaany way haha, I'm new to this site, found it a few weeks back, just going through and getting my bearings and looking at some of every ones amazing builds.
what I want to start building is a chassis for an excavator in 1/14 but I'm not going to use a traditional straight long track. I want to have 4 independent D10-D11 dozer type tracks, and have a bit of suspension in them as they crawl along..still not 100% if i want the D10 tracks or just make it flat and have them pivot, just for simplicity sake.
somewhat like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBM8mjVDuHw

I plan on doing all the drawing in fusion 360 so I can easily print a 1/20ish abs model to start with.
the part that I'm currently stuck at is getting numbers and measurements to begin my drawing at, I've kinda been winging it but its put me at a few dead ends, so what I'm looking for is some way of getting measurements of what things are supposed to be scaled down to the size that I want.

[modelman]

Do the research-you are sitting in front of the greatest research tool that has ever been developed but you just want to ask questions hoping maybe someone else will do it for you Look up the machine you want to build and use this to get your scale numbers-http://jbwid.com/scalcalc.htm
you can find just about anything on the net but you have to spend some time looking. That is part of the build process. Good Luck

[SteinHDan]

I typically try to find a couple of measurements from a spec sheet, and then scale a photo or diagram as a canvas in fusion 360 to match the known sizes.

E.g. from the spec sheet of the CAT 390F excavator, I can see that the length from the center to the very back is X meters, and the height from the ground up to the counterweight is Y meters. I insert the canvas and then scale it to match the known measurements.

After the canvas has been scaled properly, I can draw on top of it to match the sizes:


Insert canvas:






Switch to orthograpic view:





Draw in the objects:




Switch back to perspective view:




Hide canvas:





Best regards,
Stein :-)

[Tk421reporting]

Model man I have no problem doing the research and learning. I've spent sometime in front of the pc lookin at stuffs but I didn't know exactly what it was I was looking for or the terminology to get there, that link you gave me is perfect, thank you

Stein, your a genius lol I didn't know that was a thing.
Being able to put an overlay like that will help me trendously, between the two of you I'll be able to get a start and get everything in a row.
Much appreciated, thanks guys!!