Surf-style
Pointed nose, more rocker, thicker rails, real fins. Drives down the line and holds through a turn.
- Classic
- Loose
- Groveler
Design a wakesurf board in five minutes.
Cut it this afternoon.
A native Mac and iPad app for one kind of board: wakesurf, surf-style or skim-style. Sliders that stay inside proven geometry, a 3D stage you can paint, and G‑code your router will actually run.
- Board
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- Volume
- 0.0 L
- Size
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- Weight
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- Rider
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- Fins
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- Cut time
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Free to design, fin and paint. Mac and iPad, same files on both.
One wake. One kind of board.
Behind a boat, on a lake, on the wake. No ocean boards, no foils, no paddleboards. Every template, slider range and fin box in ShapeWake is here because a wakesurf board needs it. That focus is why the whole thing fits in five steps.
Why not a general board CAD?
Five steps, five screens.
General tools spread one board across curves, slices, layers, plugs and machine panels. ShapeWake is Style, Shape, Fins, Paint, Cut, and the board stays center stage the whole way.
You can't design a bad board by accident.
Every slider's range comes from the style you picked. A skim can't get three inches thick; a surf can't end up with a one-inch tail rocker. Push a limit and the slider turns orange and tells you why.
Paint is a step, not an afterthought.
Colors, fades, pinlines and drag-on stickers are in the free tier, because nobody builds a board they can't picture.
G‑code that knows what a wakesurf board is.
Fin box pockets are routed in the same job as the bottom. The two-sided flip, with registration pins, is set up before you open the file.
Step 1 Style
Start from a board that already rides.
Two styles, three templates each. Pick one and ShapeWake builds the whole board: outline, rocker, foil, rails, fins. You spend your time tuning, not drawing.
Skim-style
Thin, flat, round nose, small fins. Built to spin and slide, and to come back around.
- Classic
- Spin
- Pro
Step 2 Shape
Sliders, not splines.
The curves under the hood are real, so the volume, the 3D view and the G‑code are exact. You just never have to touch a control point.
- Size
- Length, width and thickness with live units, feet-and-inches or centimeters. Type a target volume and the board scales length, width and thickness together to hit it.
- Outline
- Wide-point position, nose and tail widths at 12". Nose: pointed, round or blunt. Tail: squash, round, swallow, pin, square, diamond; fish and bat with Shaper.
- Rocker
- Nose rocker, tail rocker and the entry curve between them.
- Thickness
- Center, nose and tail thickness, and the foil that joins them.
- Rails
- Soft, medium or hard. Pinched to full.
- Bottom and deck
- Flat, single concave, double concave, vee, or two- and four-channel bottoms. Flat, domed or recessed deck. Smart features: spoon nose, beak nose for surf, recessed deck pad for skim. Regular or goofy asymmetric tail and rails with Shaper.
Numbers that move while you do.
Volume, surface area, weight and rider range come from the actual geometry, not a lookup table. A "rides like" readout turns the numbers into feel: loose or drivey, spin or hold.
- Volume
- 0.0 L
- Size
- —
- Weight
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- Rider
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- Skim sample
- 0.0 L
Orange means "that won't ride."
Push past the style's safe range and the slider fill turns orange with the reason underneath. You can still do it. You just can't do it by accident.
Measure anywhere.
Hover or click a station to read width, thickness and rocker right there. The widths 12" from nose and tail stay on screen the whole time.
The stage, your way.
Orbit, zoom and pan, or jump to top, side, three-quarter and bottom presets. Solid, wireframe or reflective, with a level-lines overlay when you want to read the curvature.
Ghost and trace.
Overlay another saved board, or the template you started from, to see exactly what you changed. With Shaper, drop in a photo of a board you already love and trace its outline in top view.
Opens Shape3d .s3dx files.
The exact curves are kept; length, width, thickness and rocker are live immediately. "Convert to editable" fits the full slider model to the imported shape and reports the fit error, so you know what you're trading.
Step 3 Fins
Fins the router understands.
Quad or twin on a surf-style board, a single center fin on a skim. Pick the layout and the box, and the fins land where they should; the pockets go into the same G‑code as the bottom.
- Six layouts. Quad and twin, the usual surf-style setups; single, the usual skim setup; and thruster, 2+1 and finless when you want them.
- Five box systems. FCS II (Fusion), Futures, Wake single-tab screw-in, Screw-through (skim), Glass-on.
- Sizes that fit the style. Small, medium and large surf fins; ½" to 1½" pivot fins for skims.
- Placement, automatic then editable. From tail, off rail, toe and cant, derived from the layout and board size. Side fins stay mirrored.
- Leash plug and handle insert. One toggle each, off by default, because it's a wakesurf board.
- Hardware weighed. Fins, boxes and inserts are added to the board weight in the stats bar.
Pocket dimensions come from a catalog and are marked approximate where they are. Verify against your box before you cut.
Step 4 Paint
See it before you glass it.
Deck, bottom, rails and fins, each with its own color, pattern and finish. Stickers go on the 3D board, not on a flat template, so they land exactly where you put them.
Stickers you can grab.
Sixteen built-in stickers. Drag one onto the deck or bottom, then scale and rotate it with the handles; Delete removes it. With Shaper, import your own as PNG, SVG or PDF.
Patterns and finish.
Solid, Fade, Resin swirl, Stripe or Pinline, in Gloss, Matte or Clear over foam. Rails and fins get their own color.
Three places to look at it.
Lake sunset, Shaping bay or Studio white. Snapshot any view to a PNG for the group chat or the order sheet.
Step 5 Cut
From the stage to the spoilboard.
Three tabs: CNC, Hot wire, and Templates & export. Whether you own a router, a wire cutter or a planer and a good eye, the board leaves the app ready to build.
- Blank selector. EPS, PU and XPS stock sizes. The smallest blank that fits is picked for you; if the board doesn't fit, it says which dimension and suggests one that does.
- Machine profiles. Bed size, units and post-processor: Centroid Acorn, GRBL, Mach3 and Mach4, LinuxCNC, ShopBot .sbp. A board that overruns the bed is flagged before you export.
- Two tools. A roughing end mill and a finishing ball nose, each with feed, plunge, speed, stepover and stepdown. A tool shorter than the cut is flagged, too.
- Hold-down and the flip. Vacuum or end clamps, and registration pins on the centerline so the flipped blank lands where the second side expects it.
- Fin pockets in the job. Pocket depth and clearance per box system, tool-radius compensated, routed right after the bottom.
- Rail pass. A dedicated finishing pass that loops the outline to blend the rail, so the apex doesn't carry raster scallops.
- Saved with the board. Cut settings live inside the .shapewake file, so the next revision cuts the same way.
00:00
Whole job for the sample sample, —, in a — blank: pins, deck, deck outline, flip, bottom, fin pockets, bottom outline. — at — rpm. Estimated by the app and written into every file's header.
- Four-axis foam cutter. Two programs: the outline from the top and the rocker profile from the side.
- Kerf compensated. The wire path is offset by half the kerf away from the board, with lead-in and lead-out so the wire is at temperature before it meets foam.
- Which side to keep is in the file. Each cut says in plain words whether the board is above or below the wire.
- Plan print sheet. One page with every dimension. Free.
- Order sheet. A one-page build spec for a glasser or factory: dimensions, volume, fins, boxes, colors and the sticker list. Free.
- Full-scale templates. Outline and rocker, tiled across Letter or A4 pages with registration marks, for shaping by hand. Shaper.
- 2D and 3D exports. PDF and DXF of the outline, rocker and slices; STL and OBJ of the whole board. Shaper.
Library Files
Your boards, as documents.
Every board is a .shapewake file you can save, duplicate, send and open years from now. The library sorts and filters them by style, length and volume.
- Save, open, duplicate, recents. It behaves like any other document on your Mac, and lives in Files on your iPad.
- Lock before you share. File protection locks a design, with an optional password, so it can't be edited once it leaves your hands. Shaper.
- Opens .s3dx. Bring in a Shape3d file and keep working; the original is never written back to.
- Settings that stay out of the way. Units, default machine and default environment, and nothing else.
Shape at the bench. Tune it from the boat.
The iPad app is the same ShapeWake: same geometry, same five steps, same .shapewake file. It just answers to your fingers.
Also on iPad
Made for touch, not shrunk to fit.
One finger turns the board, a pinch zooms, two fingers pan. In portrait the inspector is a sheet you pull up over the stage; turn the iPad sideways and it becomes a sidebar, like the Mac.
- Touch that reads the board. One finger orbits, two fingers pan, pinch to zoom; the step presets still snap the camera where each step needs it.
- Pencil for stickers. Tap a sticker onto the deck with Apple Pencil, then drag the corner handles to scale and the knob to rotate. Hover shows the measure readout before you touch down.
- Sheet or sidebar. Bottom sheet in portrait, sidebar in landscape, and a narrow layout for Split View and Stage Manager.
- Files and Photos. Boards live in Files, in iCloud Drive or on the iPad. Open an .s3dx from Files; with Shaper, bring a sticker in from Photos.
- G‑code as a folder. Export writes the numbered files into one folder and Files asks where to put it, so an AirDrop or a USB stick to the shop is one move.
- Same file, both ways. A .shapewake saved on the iPad opens on the Mac with every slider, sticker and cut setting intact, and back again.
Five steps. One board.
The same geometry you saw in the app, walked through once from template to toolpath. Scroll.
- Volume
- — L
- Length
- —
- Width
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- Cut time
- 00:00
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Style
Pick surf or skim.
Six templates, each already a board that rides. One click builds the whole thing.
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Shape
Slide. The numbers follow.
Longer, wider, more rocker: volume, weight and the "rides like" readout update on every drag, and nothing goes outside the style's safe range by accident.
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Fins
Roll it over. Choose a layout.
Fins and boxes. The pockets are already in the cut job.
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Paint
Color it before you glass it.
A fade on the deck, a pinline, a sticker where your back foot goes. Snapshot it.
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Cut
Send it to the router.
Pins, deck, flip, bottom with fin pockets, outline. Under an hour of toolpath, with the header telling you where zero is.
For shapers who cut their own.
The G‑code is real, validated, and written for a person standing at the machine. Every file opens with a header you can read before you press cycle start.
Five posts.
Centroid Acorn (.ngc), GRBL (.nc), Mach3 and Mach4 (.tap), LinuxCNC (.ngc), ShopBot (.sbp). Inches or millimeters, whichever your machine speaks.
The header tells you work zero, the flip and the pins.
Where X0 Y0 is, which face is Z0 for this side, where the two registration pins are, and which axis to roll the blank about so the second side lands mirrored the way the files assume.
Stock simulation keeps the bit out of trouble.
Before anything moves, the file lists the blank top and the spoilboard, the board's highest and lowest points, and the foam left above and below them. Tests check every Z stays inside the blank and every XY inside the bed.
A deep-pass rule per foam.
EPS lets a ball nose run past its flute in one pass; PU and XPS don't. The policy is chosen from the blank material and spelled out in the header, with the depth it will reach.
(header excerpt loads from js/board-data.js, generated from the sample G-code)Design for free. Pay when you cut.
Everything to design, fin and paint a board costs nothing. Shaper adds the exports a hand-shaper needs. Shop adds the machine. The same three plans on Mac and iPad.
Free
$0
No card, no trial clock.
Design, fin and paint. Keep it forever.
- Both styles, all six templates
- Every Shape slider, live stats, "rides like"
- Fins, boxes, placement
- Paint, patterns, finish, 16 built-in stickers
- Save, open, library
- Plan print sheet and order sheet
- Opens .s3dx files
Shaper
$5.99/month
For hand-shaping and sending boards out.
- Everything in Free
- Your own stickers (PNG, SVG, PDF)
- Image overlay to trace a board
- Asymmetric tails and rails
- Fish and bat tails
- Full-scale tiled templates
- PDF, DXF, STL and OBJ export
- File protection
Shop
$17.99/month
For a router or a hot wire.
- Everything in Shaper
- Blank selector
- Machine profiles and five post-processors
- Toolpath preview and cut time
- CNC G‑code with fin pockets and the flip
- Rail pass
- Hot-wire G‑code
What shapers say
Placeholder. These three cards are reserved for quotes from early testers once the beta ships. Nothing here is a real testimonial yet.
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Questions
Mac or iPad?
Both. ShapeWake is a native app on Mac and on iPad, built on the same geometry, G‑code and board model. A .shapewake file opens on either one; keep it in iCloud Drive and the board you shaped at the bench is the one you tune at the dock.
Does it open Shape3d files?
Yes, .s3dx files. The exact curves are kept, and the resize sliders work right away. "Convert to editable" fits ShapeWake's slider model to the shape and shows you the fit error. The original file is never written back to. Older .brd, .kms and .pbd formats are not supported.
Which machines does it talk to?
Anything that reads one of five posts: Centroid Acorn, GRBL, Mach3/Mach4, LinuxCNC and ShopBot .sbp. You set the bed size and units in a machine profile; the board is checked against the bed before export. Hot-wire output is for a four-axis foam cutter.
Do I need a CNC?
No. The plan print sheet and order sheet are free. With Shaper you get full-scale outline and rocker templates tiled across Letter or A4 pages, which is everything you need to shape by hand or send to a glasser. The CNC and hot-wire output is in the Shop tier.
Imperial or metric?
Both, live. Switch between feet-and-inches and centimeters anywhere; every readout and slider follows. G‑code is written in the units of your machine profile.
Surf-style or skim-style, what's the difference?
Surf-style boards have a pointed nose, more rocker, thicker rails and real fins; they drive and hold. Skim-style boards are thin and flat with a round nose and small fins; they spin and slide. ShapeWake treats them as two styles with their own templates and their own safe ranges, so a skim can't accidentally grow surf-board rails.
Are the fin box pockets exact?
They come from a catalog of box dimensions and are marked approximate where the catalog is. The depth and clearance margin are editable per box system, and the app says "verify against your box" where it means it. Measure your boxes before you cut.
What's the file format?
.shapewake, a JSON document, the same on Mac and iPad. Save, open, recents and duplicate come from the system. Your cut settings are saved inside it, so a board cuts the same way next season.
Is the G‑code safe to run?
Every file starts with a geometry check: blank top, spoilboard, board high and low points, and the foam left around them. Automated tests confirm every finishing Z stays inside the blank and above the spoilboard, every XY stays inside the bed, and the cut surface matches the board within tolerance. Read the header anyway, verify the safe height under your Z convention, and check your bit's rated rpm. It's foam, but it's still a spinning tool.
Shape one tonight.
Free to design, fin and paint. Shaper and Shop unlock when you need them, from inside the app.
One .shapewake file, both devices. Shaper and Shop unlock from inside either app.
