Hello Friends, Jrandy from Minnesota here
finFoil is an amazing program for designing and making data for foils. It caught my eye early on as a visualization tool for making surfboard fins out of plywood. As the program was upgraded, it has allowed me to take designs from napkin sketches to CAD prints to use as background images for fin design. The program runs with app-like simplicity, and only requires basic parameters (size, thickness, type of symmetry) to start a design. Because it is already optimized for foils, a person can manipulate the control points to design foils much more rapidly than with higher-cost 3D software (which I use at work). Revising designs is very simple and has allowed me to collaborate on designs with other people. The best feature for me has been the 3D STL output, which allows me to take designs from finFoil and export them to STL files. From there I add the fin bases for surfboards, and send the merged STL file to the software that writes programs for a 3-axis CNC (substitute 3D printing if you like).
Thanks again Hans for all the programming and fin-making advice over the years! -Jim