Design:how to start

[captain john]

hello,
i am new in this forum and i am a new boat designer so i don't know much about boat design....any help from you would be very helpful in this point....i would like to know how to start designing on the paper(if some tutorials are avaliable) or if you could tell me how to design it on the computer....
thank's for your time..

[joz]

Originally Posted by captain john

hello,
i am a new boat designer so i don't know much about boat design....any help from you would be very helpful in this point....i would like to know how to start designing on the paper(if some tutorials are avaliable) or if you could tell me how to design it on the computer....

If you are a boat designer as you say you are then why ask this question, either you are a boat designer or not

[captain john]

by telling i am a new boat designer i mean that i haven't started to design yet but i want to....so if you want to offer me any help....

[wardd]

for some of us english may be a second language

[marshmat]

Hi cap'n john,

May I suggest you start with some books. Everyone has their favourites. "Principles of Yacht Design" (Larsson/Eliasson) is a popular one, as is Skene's "Elements of Yacht Design" and its Kinney revision. Other books to track down are those by Dave Gerr, C.A. Marchaj, Steve & Linda Dashew, Steve Killing, Chris White.... the list goes on, depending on what you're interested in.

Get to know the terminology, the mathematical coefficients, the effect of various design features on the behaviour of a boat.

Now go hang out at the local boatyard. Wander around the yachts, dinghies and powerboats that are hauled out. Try to relate what you see here to what you read in the books. Talk to owners.

No engineering discipline can be learned overnight. And in boat design- very much unlike, say, structural engineering or nuclear physics- accurate, precise design and analysis methods are often very hard to find. Most successful designers seem to say that intuition, experience and an understanding of the client's needs are at least as important as being able to draw and do calculations.

Enjoy the journey.....

[nukisen]

I am also quite new to this. I have being working with 3000-12000tonnage ships since 1996. But not as designer. After about 12 years i thought it was a good idea to try make sketches of my own boat. Under a year I have learned a bit of recistanse, cross testing and other thing as Cp, Block coefficient, length water line, displacements and other useful terms.

Read on the net, studie programs so you are able to make a full functional hull.

The programs I am using is of course Freeship!
Sketchup!

With freeship I do have a calculator that puts the hydrodynamics for me.
And with Sketchup I do the rest of the design.

I have tried a few hullforms, and I am also building a little prototype sailboat.
Also it looks like no other boats i have ever seen before.
Maybe because it doesnt looks very well. But it is a low budget and the functionality I am running for.

[duluthboats]

Matt,
I will have to copy that response it is the best advice in as few words a new guy could get. I can just paste it in three times a week as the same question is asked.
To the new guys, use the search function and read there is a lot of stuff already covered. Most of your questions have been asked many many times.
Gary ;D

[marshmat]

Thanks for the compliment, Gary

A note on the CAD issue. (This is coming from an engineering school graduate who grew up with 3D CAD.)

A CAD system, no matter how fancy, is only as good as the engineering sense of the person holding the mouse. No CAD program will design a boat for you. It can't tell you whether to rig it as a sloop or a ketch, or whether the ballast ratio should be 35% or 40%, or how much clearance is needed between the jib sheet winch and the coaming.

All a CAD system will do is to speed up calculations and drawings that you already know how to do. If you can't translate something from your brain to your paper, adding a computer won't make things any better. Where CAD excels is in automating calculations that would otherwise be tedious- weights and moments, for example, or inclined hydrostatics, or getting a properly faired set of templates to the cutting table.

Never base your learning and your design methodology around a computer program. Learn it for yourself, understand it for yourself. Use software you already have, or stuff that's free/cheap and easy to learn, to sketch out ideas and help you to see whether you're really understanding things. Then, and only then, consider whether you might be able to save some real design time by having a computer do some of the grunt work.

[captain john]

Thank you all for the advice...they are very useful to me especially now i am starting to learning....

[peterAustralia]

start with pencil and paper

graph paper can work well, makes it easier to judge distances. After a while then you can put the offsets into computer. The computer is useful for determining things like freeboard, sinkage, trim, wetted surface area, prismatic coefficients etc. But get good at pencil and paper first

[PAR]

Read Howard Chapelle's "Yacht Design & Planning" from cover to cover, study it until the information is ingrained, then you'll have a moderate, but reasonable primer on hand drawing yachts. Of course most of the skills you'll acquire will be useless once you make the transition to computer, but you asked for hand drawn. There are several other books that would also be helpful, plus a good working knowledge of structural engineering and analysis. Of course it would be simpler and quicker to take course.

[joz]

Originally Posted by captain john

by telling i am a new boat designer i mean that i haven't started to design yet but i want to....so if you want to offer me any help....

Well it would have been better to say that I am interested in boat design rather than the above qoute.

PAR's Comments, Of course it would be simpler and quicker to take course.

It would be easier and more logical way to go if you want to become a boat designer.

start with pencil and paper

graph paper can work well, makes it easier to judge distances. After a while then you can put the offsets into computer. The computer is useful for determining things like freeboard, sinkage, trim, wetted surface area, prismatic coefficients etc. But get good at pencil and paper first

Peter

The computer is a useful tool in boat design but you do all your calculations first by hand and then input into the computer not the other way around and see if your calculations match if not then redo it again til you get it right.

Graph paper is good, but if you invest in a plainimeter it would take out alot of heartache when doing areas.

[fth_gk]

hi ı m pleased too meet with this site and you. ı am a bigineer of naval architect engineer. ı really try too learn more about naval engineering. ı will appreciate
you if you give some advises to me as begineering

[tom28571]

Gary, Matt, Paul, This thread has gone much better than similar ones often do because no one jumped on the new guy. You guys gave great advice and it appears to have registered.

We really should have a separate thread to be referenced when this question comes up a couple times a week.