When I make my grids, I use a computer aided drafting tool called AutoCAD. This is a top-shelf drafting tool, one of many availabe. I have been tying knots for forty years, tying complex Turks Heads in hand without instructions. I started making tools for knots I tied most often out of toilet paper tubes and a marker. When I had a mid life career change, and started drafting, it became obvious to use the drafting to help make the tools.
Computer drafting programs have a built in graph paper. You tell the machine the two points, and it draws a straight line. A point and a radius, and a circle appears. It’s intuitive, point and click. A line will “magnet” into an another line for seamless transitions. I tell the machine line color, line width, scale, hundreds of variables are available. I sit at this machine and draft boats for 8 hours a day, 2 dimensional grids become simple. I have an excelent spatial thought process. I can see where Ashley would have had the same type of spatial memory to remember so many knots.
When I started drafting grids, I taught myself on the easy stuff first. I’m sure Ashley started out the same way. The more you do stuff, the easier it gets. The beauty of the computer is that all my past work is available to reuse. Like a Word document that you use over and over again, changing a name, or address, I reuse drawings. Always adding to them, using past work to determine future outcomes. I save any useful drafting, computer memory is cheap.
When I started drafting Turks Heads, I would tie the knot, and sit at the keyboard designing the grid. I am to a point where I can visualize the knot, and draft it. Then I have to tie it to see what it looks like. This is how I designed the Turks Head chess set that I have posted in my gallery at www.khww.net. The grids are extremely complex, but they have a history of simpler grids.
Pat