Best Free or Low Cost Marine Design Software? (2008-2010)

[marshmat]

Originally Posted by Raggi_Thor

do they have the same user interface and modelling capabilities, Freeship and Delftship?

Yes, the modelling code and the GUI are essentially the same for Delftship and Freeship Plus. There is no guarantee of file compatibility between the native file formats of the two programs, though.

[Fanie]

There is no guarantee of file compatibility between the native file formats of the two programs, though.

You can take the guarantee out The files are not interchangeable. On my PC anyway, I had to redraw my boat's hull from scratch.

[Raggi_Thor]

Originally Posted by Vulkyn

What exactly do you mean ??
River, Red Sea or Mediterranean or something completely different ??

I was joking, but I meant the river Nile.

[Raggi_Thor]

Thanks Matt and Fanie.
I suppose you have some import/export also?

Today I revisited the Polycad web pages.
It looks quite impressive, but when I tried it some years ago I found it not so user friendly. Maybe I'm getting old, I grew up with AutoCAD (from 1986) and I like the way Rhino work as the "3D Surface AutoCAD" we all wished for.

[Fanie]

but I meant the river Nile.

Denial is not a river in Egypt

[Raggi_Thor]

While we're at it, a felluca drifting on the Nile?

[Vulkyn]

Hehe nice pic ! the design for Fulleca's have not changed in almost 100 years!! i got some pics taken from 1905 and they are almost identical !!

Beautiful boats

P.S sorry i do not mean to derail the thread !!

[daiquiri]

Originally Posted by marshmat

Martijn (the original developer) decided to go after the pro/commercial market and renamed that branch Delftship and added a bunch of modules for common tasks in commercial naval architecture. It has a free version that is pretty much the same as older Free!ship versions, and a pro version that can use the powerful NA calculation modules.

Marsh, can you please tell me (very briefly) what NA modules are available in Delftship?
Also, what resistance prediction methods are curently available in Delftship?

[marshmat]

Daiquiri: See http://delftship.net/delftship/index...d=12&Itemid=20
The add-on modules are mostly for stability methods (probabilistic damaged stability, load cases, crosscurves, inclined hydrostatics, dredgers, etc.) but there are also a few for oil spill risk and some structural calcs.

[daiquiri]

Thanks Marsh, but I couldn't find any info about power/resistance prediction methods available. If you or someone else here uses DS, could you please give me some info? Thanks.

[yipster]

delft and john winters kaper (altho only to a certain size and link to michlett is integrated
new for "only" 150.- is wave hydrostatics but havent try'd that one yet

http://delftship.net/delftship/index...flash&Itemid=8

[Raggi_Thor]

Very cool graphics, but is it realistic?

[daiquiri]

I think it's a pitty that such a nice software has only two resistance predictions available - and none for planing hulls, for example. I wrote that to Martijn a year or more ago, and have hoped to hear that something has changed in the meanwhile...

[spidennis]

are there any freeware/shareware programs for the mac?

[NoEyeDeer]

By the way, for anyone who is interested I came up with a trick to get smooth lines plans out of Delftship. I imagine it would be as good with any other software that produces lines plans.

As an old(ish) fart who grew up with manual drafting I've always found the jaggy lines outputted from CAD apps rather annoying.

The trick is to export that lines plan at a ridiculous size (20,000px wide works well) and then use a graphics app like Photoshop or GIMP to shrink the image down to a handy width (like 1280 or whatever). The shrinking process smooths out the jags so that the result is very nearly as smooth as traditional manual drafting. Save as a jpg and it's all sorted.

I don't know if this trick is original but it works and it works well.