What software do you use? (CAD)
I use FormZ, which is a good Jack of all trades, master of none 3D modeler AND renderer. Their recent upgrades have greatly improved their nurds surface (I love spell check) tools and the interface got a much needed boost as well. I can’t say I’d recommend it for proa modeling, no hydrostatics plug-ins. They do boast about their model “integrity” for say, sending files off to a 3D printer, so there’s that.
I’ve also heard many a negative story concerning Rhino files, some first hand. However I know there are work arounds, and here in the Pacific NW (home of Rhino) if you want to collaborate in yacht design, you’d better be able to collaborate with Rhino. It’s the big fish in our small pond.
I’m glad Anders mentioned TouchCad. I’ve been collaborating with Laurie McGowan (co-designer of Evergreen) for several years and he has completely fallen in love with it. It excels at flat panel “unfolding” for cutting out anything from plywood CNC parts to sails (or metal boats). Laurie says it is very reliable. Even comes with some boat hydrostatics, no plug-in $ required. Attached is the model of Evergreen, done in TouchCad. You can email either Laurie or Claes for more info, and tell them that I sent you. 😊
“I feel again” the beautiful Swenglish language from mina own videos.
TouchCAD seems very interesting!
Very fast and efficient workflow, and i really like the unfold pattern feature. Perfect for steel sheet patterns.
Thanks Anders and Michael for info about TouchCAD!
Johannes
What do you do about the thicknesses of parts in a surface modeler, Sven? Does Rhino flatten panels easily? That’s something Solidworks doesn’t like to do—but will in sheet metal settings if you know your “k” values and all that.
Chirs
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Aloha Chris,
1. what do you mean with ” thicknesses of parts in a surface modeler” ? the off-set surface or?
2. rhino has a feature to flatten plates , as long as it is bend in one direction of course.
for my professional flattening [double bend steel and aluminium] I use ShipConstructor software
lately I am comparing the two to see the difference. Rhino is pretty close to ShipConstructor as a check.
Iam planning a 1:10 scale model of the 53ft to check it further.
cheers Sven
Hi Sven,
I have never used Rhino, so excuse my ignorance! In Solidworks, you can make surfaces and solids. My understanding is that Rhino does not make solids. Is that wrong?
So say I want to make tabbed bulkheads that index to the hull sides. I would build the basic shape in surfaces, thicken them in the directions I wanted to thicken them to make them solid, then add the tabs to the bulkheads. Now the tabs and the sides exist in the same space. Then I do a body subtract, which removes the part of the sides where the tabs are. Voila, perfectly indexed parts.
Do you just offset surfaces in Rhino and trim them. Sounds like more work to me, but then again, I’m just imagining what happens.
Now that I know it unfolds single curvature (conical) surfaces and does hydrostatics, I’m intrigued.
I was considering buying DelftShip for those features.
Kensho, here I come.
Chris
Do you just offset surfaces in Rhino and trim them. Sounds like more work to me, but then again, I’m just imagining what happens.
In a surface modelling program that is generally what you would do. Modelling thickness in a surface modeler is quite a lot of work compared to a solid modeler, however surface modelling is good for developing the initial hull shape, particularly if you can check the hydrostatics on the fly.
My workflow is to develop the hull shape in a surface modeling progam, then transfer the surfaces to a solid modeler to add the skin thickness and other structure. Anything geometric or planar is usually more conveniently done in the solid modeling program.
Mal.
Now that I know it unfolds single curvature (conical) surfaces and does hydrostatics, I’m intrigued.
I was considering buying DelftShip for those features.
Chris
Delftship is free, and fantastic for creating a multi chine ply hull. It is very easy to unfold and turn into quick and dirty models. Though not a proa this a few hours work, both computer and scale modelling
http://youtu.be/NmlYLz4j2aM
I then transfer this into solid edge (similar to solid works but MUCH) simpler. Free if you are a teacher or student. I have learnt well over 10 different CAD packages and solid edge is as good as most people will need.
Tink
Now that I know it unfolds single curvature (conical) surfaces and does hydrostatics, I’m intrigued.
I was considering buying DelftShip for those features.
ChrisDelftship is free, and fantastic for creating a multi chine ply hull. It is very easy to unfold and turn into quick and dirty models. Though not a proa this a few hours work, both computer and scale modelling
http://youtu.be/NmlYLz4j2aMI then transfer this into solid edge (similar to solid works but MUCH) simpler. Free if you are a teacher or student. I have learnt well over 10 different CAD packages and solid edge is as good as most people will need.
Tink
Aloha Tink,
I was also looking a Delftship yesterday ( I use Prolines now). , interesting stuff , as you use it , can you tell me ; how chine lines can be checked and refaired , and secondly , if and how it sorts developable plates?
Thanks,
cheers Sven
I was also looking a Delftship yesterday ( I use Prolines now). , interesting stuff , as you use it , can you tell me ; how chine lines can be checked and refaired , and secondly , if and how it sorts developable plates?
Thanks,
cheers Sven
Aloha Sven
Has a control net which you adjust and it fairs it for you generally. There are the usual zebra stripes etc so you can check out fairness, as I am using as a quick and dirty hydrodynamics package this is not something I fuss about. It creates the development plates and you can move them about but there (or I haven’t found it) isn’t an auto nesting feature. It is free very easy to pick up so just download it and play. Each plate has to be put on a separate layer to get the development to work, you also need to turn each longitudinal control curve into a chine.
It was developed by Delft university and used commercially to design ships
Tink
It might be worthwhile to check out FreeCAD (open source) as it now has a marine/naval architecture module. I’ve downloaded it and tried it out on SolydX (Debian based) and it seems to work quite well, though I haven’t tried designing anything with it yet. It’s available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. There are a number of tutorials on YouTube.
A more comprehensive package is CAELinux, which is a Linux distro (Xubuntu based) intended for high-level design and computation. It contans FreeCAD, plus other drafting and modeling software, and a full range of FEA, structural engineering and computational fluid design programs. The maintainer of CAELinux has posted an Amazon EC2 virtual machine image, so you can do your design and pre-processing on your home computer, then run the solvers in a multiprocessor instance in the cloud.
CAELinux is a nearly 4 gig download (one full DVD), and installs to about 20 gig on your hard-drive. It’s a live DVD release so you can try it on your PC or Mac without installing it, or you can create a live USB thumb-drive (on a suitably large thumb-drive!) which will run much faster than the DVD version. Since it is Xubuntu-based, it should also run under Wubi. Fastest is of course to install it properly; not a problem since dual-booting Linux with either Mac or Windows is trivially easy these days.
FreeCAD:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/free-cad/
http://freecadweb.org/
CAELinux:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/caelinux/
http://www.caelinux.com/CMS/
Hey Diazo, thanks for the links. Freecad has improved a lot since I last looked at it. CAELinux also looks very interesting.