Hi Carl,
trying to remember the logics in finding sizes of a new main stand I´d start by deciding on the mounting holes, maybe like the Hills design. So then your engine plates need some extension at bottom for shorter tubes. Not necessary I believe, you could have the holes in standard plates as well and live with longer stand tubes extending more to the rear when up. The stand needs not go up very high, just sufficiently to clear the road going round corners.
So then put the bike on its wheels and note the distance of mounting hole to ground.
Next dimension is the stand height when the bike is up on main stand: Jack the bike up at roughly the main stand location, check clearance of rear wheel for one or two fingers gap to ground. This is your desired height of bike on main stand, so get the dimension of mounting hole to ground in this stage.
Now you can do a sketch with a cardboard curved foot and tube length at jacked up height from ground according to the measured dimensions above. Have the feet a bit positioned forward to frontwheel relative to the mounting hole, so the bike will stay safe in jacked up state.
With the cardboard tubing and foot cut out for the jacked up length you then simulate the moment when you lower the stand at parking place: The curved foot will touch ground at bike height like you measured with bike on wheels, no stand lift action yet. So from this situation you want the curved feet to raise the bike up to the jacked up position when rolling the bike back to the rear. I want to get a smooth lifting effect along the backrolling action, so for this target you can modify the curve of the feet to achieve this motion by checking the additional height to ground while you slowly turn the cardboard stand towards the fully jacked up position - by "rolling it along the road" . The increase of lift should be linear I´d think, so you don´t have to heave at certain situations like with poorly designed mainstands.
Hope this write up will be helpful a bit for coming up with own designs. Certainly the Hills stand was a big improvement over the abysmal rear stand, but to me it does not look like it could not be optimised in places. I do know main stands which are a pain to use - well, to someone who never had rear stands like on lots of prewar bikes.
Vic