Interior Design Software

[ielmazi]

Hello,

I work as a junior stock analyst, covering the software sector for a Canadian brokerage. We are currently in the process of performing background research on a company that manufactures and sells interior design software which produces photo-realistic renderings. The company concentrates on the residential and commercial office markets, however we view the aircraft/RV/yacht interior design visualization markets as potential opportunities for expansion and would like to determine market size, competitors already in the space, etc.

I know that you are likely very busy, however we would appreciate your assistance in answering the following short questions:

1) What boating interior design 3D rendering software packages exist?
2) What do you believe is the most common software package used in the industry or are hand drawing by far the most popular?
3) We have found it difficult to obtain good market data. Could you point us to any sources that would help us gather market facts (market size, the process one would go through in purchasing and designing a yacht, main software competitors etc.)?

[ABoatGuy]

See: www.3dviz.com

Some of the best rendering I have every seen (interiors and exteriors). I believe they are using Rhino for construction and 3D Studio Max for rendering. Pretty spectacular stuff and reasonable. I'm sure they can tell you who there competition is and they probably have a pretty good grip on the available software.

(Not connected with them in any way).

[D'ARTOIS]

You must look for the interior-designers in the up level yachtingindustry - they make top dollars, much more than Naval Architects, and they can give you an answer. But it is a very important part of the cad and artrist's impressions that are needed to sell the product to the client as well as to build the interiors in reality.

[yipster]

the interior-designers in the up level yachtingindustry

i can only dream of...

ielmazi,
the fields you mention are very custom and compared to designing boats and planes its not that hard or time consuming doing the decoration. we use demo's and software as mentioned in the software section. you could think of file format compatibility, than again for fun i once modified some furniture files from a popular interior program...

[D'ARTOIS]

Well Joop, it' s a b****y fact, look at Tim Heyward, Terence Disdale, Ken Freivokh, John Munford; I can mention another 10, Look at Pelorus, Virginian, Carinthia......What do you think those interiors do? Moneywise. Accidentally I know some figures, and indeed dear friend, we could only dream of.....

[yipster]

another sleepless night for me? thanks for the names, i'll search, gotta like their work

[D'ARTOIS]

Only a bedroom Joop, "Amnesia" (55 mtr Benetti)

[CDBarry]

Please note that the yacht market is pretty small, even compared to commercial ships, which is also pretty small. There was a magazine called Marine Interiors that was published awhile back, and of course, Professional Boatbuilder / IBEX / METS(www.proboat.com). There is also a super yacht gathering coming up in NZ shortly.

Showboat Magazine does an world order book survey every year, published in the Jan issue (on the stands late Nov.).

Most interior work uses the normal arh. type stuff Autodesk product, Form-Z, etc.

[Sfklipper]

Hi – I am new to this forum, pretty new to the professional boating world and most certainly to the software side of boat design. I fit out ex-commercial cargo barges (approx 90 x 20 ft), which we convert into residential and cruising homes. The main problem is to give people a feel of what the interior design ideas will look like in a barge hull.

Rhino is mentioned a lot here and I am playing with the demo.
I am not sure whether I am looking at the right software for my purposes. I want to create 3D conceptual and maybe detailed layout plans / models for interior fit outs. What I struggle with in Rhino is that I can’t resize objects easily.
I need to modify single and grouped objects and fit them into given spaces. For example if I create a box, cabinet or furniture I would like to resize them to absolute dimensions to make them fit. Alternatively I would want to scale them to fit all I need into a given space and then read out the overall dimensions in a property dialog box rather than having to apply individual dimensions to all objects placed.

I have be using Micrografix Designer, a 2D technical drawing package, to create conceptual layouts, where I modify objects using the drawing handles and get the dimensions in a display box. I can’t believe a package like Rhino doesn’t allow you to deal with objects in such a way. Am I looking at the wrong software? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I am only a one-man band in a part of the industry where software is often still considered upholstery.

Thanks Stefan Fritz

[dinsdale]

The Interior designers for Houses etc use AutoCad to do the plans and then render it in Bryce or 3DStudio Max or Rhino3D.

AutoCad is better for design and the others for rendering that design.
Don't see how this wouldn't be the same for boats.

The guys at Bateau.dom uses CAD of some kind, I think, to design the boat.
Then he has plans that can be used for CNC and used to render as well,

Check out the Trawler he recently released.
http://www.bateau.com/studyplans/TW28_study.htm