Pre assembly is without a doubdt one of the absolute most important parts of designing a flight simulator. This is the time where you get to make all of your mistakes and visual changes. There are 4 basic steps in pre assembly:
1. The first step comes before phase 1 construction and is actually a common sense step. That is to gather as much information as possible about the structure you are building. This means you need to gather pictures and dimensions if available. The more pictures you have for your cockpit, the more realistic your project will end up. You can find a plethora of cockpit photos at www.airliners.net.
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2. Step 2 is the same as Phase 1 construction. Phase 1 Construction consists of drawing out and dimensioning the entire structure, to scale, on paper or posterboard. This will allow you to visually see how each part will fit together, and it will allow you to gauge the actual size of the structure. Trust me when I say that you can find a lot of problems with "planned procedures" during this step.
3. Step 3 (Phase 2 Construction) is where you create the template for the panel frame. This step only applies to button or instrument panel frames (the structure that all button panels sit on top of). During this step, you determine how large to make each of the center cuts and you draw a "frame plan" on a sheet of posterboard. As you can see in the above illustration, I measured and cut the posterboard to the exact dimensions of the final frame. This step is extremely important because a mismeasurement or miscut of even 1/16 of an inch can cause your screws to miss. After you are satisfied with the accuracy of your phase 2 drawing, you may proceed to phase 3.
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4. Phase 3 (Final Construction). This is where you actually cut your structure out of whatever material you are planning to use for the actual production model. Basically, Phase 2 and Phase 3 should look exactly the same unless you had errors in phase 2. If the structure did not require you to go got through Phase 2 construction, you may proceed to start cutting the structure to the dimensions you laid out in Phase 1 construction (step 2).