Analysis software

I am a civil engineering student whom is in change of designing the canoe for the 2005 concrete canoe compitition. I have a few designs but lack away to do the analysis: bouancy, free board, drag, ext. If anyone has any freeware links or software that will accept AutoCad models let me know.

 

for a start Get hold of the program Rhinoceros from McNeel.
It will read your autocad files and has built in basic hydrostatics.

Then read a couple of modern books on naval architecture to get the feel for required hullforms.

Will this be a hand powered canoe? What are your design criteria.

 

Download a copy of Maxsurf Academic from the web site below, it will allow you to do the hull design in 3D as well as the hydrostatics.