Learning the ropes of boat design software

[dishsail]

Hello,

I am new to boat design and have been doing a lot of reading. I have a heavy background in CAD with AutoCAD and Pro/E. I would like to learn how to use different CAD software. I don't know if anyone has any suggestions about how I go about doing this. I learn best by reading and then hands on. I do not have any boat designs myself I am just learning the ropes.

Thanks,
Joseph

[Jeff]

My advice would be to download several of the demos (http://boatdesign.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=82) to see what's right for you and start by reading & following along with the tutorials in the manual or on the web site for each. I really like the fact that the standard for marine design software is to have a demo available so people can try them out first hand.

For example, for ProSurf there are these nice intros:
http://www.newavesys.com/tutorial.htm

For Rhino there are these
http://www.rhino3d.com/tutorials.htm
(but unfortunately the training guides are only for registered users, not for those working with the demo, but the cadence ones are free and there are a number of others on the web also - for example the user tutorials lower down the page are free, and there are some nice ones like http://www.suurland.com/gallery_stills_newbeetle.htm which although not marine related are very nicely done - I'm not sure when Cliff will have a revised marine tutorial cd and I've not seen one of his tutorials or anyone who has used one, but people speak very highly of Cliff in general so I would expect good things.)


For Autoship, the Users Manual is a good way to get started:
http://www.na.chalmers.se/~sw/MMA135/autoship.html
or
http://www.na.chalmers.se/~niklasw/uGrad/autoshipmanuals/ship.pdf
(I think this is on the www.autoship.com web site somewhere as well, but I couldn't find it tonight).

Also when you download the demos you get a number of example designs which you can work with a little to get a better feel for the programs