Best Marine Design Software for Hull Design? (2001-2005)

[Jim Young]

I too am supprised to not see Pro-E as an option. I use Pro-E extensively in my trade (medical device design) but have never had the chance to look at their hull design module. Their sol;id modeling and FEA capabilities are "top notch" in my book. Does anyone out there have any working expierence with with their hull design? I have often thought of getting it to "play around with".

[Baldur]

I thinks Freeship is by far the best free software.
It does everything I need, exports to .DXF and best of all it's absolutely FREE!


http://www.freeship.org/

[jam007]

FREE!Ship is the best since it´s the only one I can afford
And I´m a fan (and member) of the Sourceforge community...

[wdnboatbuilder]

This is a good forum. I'm interested in buying a program myself but have had the same question as above. I was in Westlawn and bought a program I believe it was New Wave Systems ( don't hold me to that ,who ever it is they will not answer my phone calls or e-mails) but could not seem to enter any points say taking a table of offsets and entering them in and find your hull. I was taught to draw on a hard board. so what i like to do is to hard board it in 1/4 scale pull the offsets and enter the offsets in the program. Been doing this in ACAD but alot of work and you don't get a fair surface. so i look at it in a wire frame. can I do this in any of the programs in which you are discussing entering a table of offsets to get the shape on the comp.? Laying out the grid and entering in points?

[CGN]

ProSurf is able to do that, but you need to practice, like how to input coordinates to each point, from there you can add as many frames you may need with the coordinates from the offsets.

the other way is to use freeship, I haven't used this option but there is a way to input a hullform form a table of offsets.

If you went to westlawn you can probably get the hydrostatics from the lines plan or form the table of offsets that you have, and once you have these values, use prosurf to model a boat similar with the same specifications, LCB, Beam, length, waterline, etc.., it will give you better results and more control on your design.

This is a good tutorial how you can input a table of offsets using prosurf

http://www.newavesys.com/RulingLines.htm

cheers

[ludesign]

Originally Posted by wdnboatbuilder

This is a good forum. I'm interested in buying a program myself but have had the same question as above. I was in Westlawn and bought a program I believe it was New Wave Systems ( don't hold me to that ,who ever it is they will not answer my phone calls or e-mails) but could not seem to enter any points say taking a table of offsets and entering them in and find your hull. I was taught to draw on a hard board. so what i like to do is to hard board it in 1/4 scale pull the offsets and enter the offsets in the program. Been doing this in ACAD but alot of work and you don't get a fair surface. so i look at it in a wire frame. can I do this in any of the programs in which you are discussing entering a table of offsets to get the shape on the comp.? Laying out the grid and entering in points?

TouchCAD allows you to import the offsets. More importantly though, it comes with some built in features making it a lot easier to smooth out the surfaces, typically generated by the, from a curve point of view, random point distribution of the offset lines. www.touchcad.com

[wdnboatbuilder]

Thank you for your comments, i have tried to contact holister at new wave systems and they won't return my calls or e-mail thought they were out of business.

[Stephen Ditmore]

I have a hard time believing Steve Hollister left his users completely stranded. It just doesn't sound like the Steve Hollister I know.
Here's his web site: http://www.newavesys.com/
He's pretty much a one man band. Try him again later.

I'm leaning toward going with TouchCAD myself.

[CGN]

Yes I'm surprised also, but if you bought the software you probably want to use it, if you follow the tutorial it pretty much says how to use a table of offset to input a boat, now chances are that anyway you are going to need to "play" a little bit with this hull even if is read from a table of offset.

I think there almost is no difference between other software's on what you can achieved, but if you want to move to another software, then try Touchcad, Rhino and download FreeShip, but I think your best bet is to learn prosurf, just because you already have the software.

Cheers!

[wdnboatbuilder]

the problen is that i need a pasword to get it to operate in my new computer and a can't get a reply from any one there. i know that steve is a one man show but i have tried and with ya'lls confidence in him i will try again. i also know that one of the Stanley boys has a program out of SW harbor ME not sure what it is call ed at the moment but anyone know which one i am talking of. as you notice i'm new to this site but believe will come to it often. thanks or the link that is the program i have and have e-mailed again. once again thanks for the comments and support of the topic.

[DGreenwood]

That would be Multi-surf (Aero Hydro)

[yago]

Originally Posted by wdnboatbuilder

the problen is that i need a pasword to get it to operate in my new computer and a can't get a reply from any one

With all respect for Mr Hollister and prosurf of which I have heard only the best - but this is a general issue. Software that locks to your machine and then depends on small outfits or one man shows should be avoided like the pest.

Although I do understand the authors needs and interests, it's just not a good plan. Imagine that you actually put a year's work in it, and just when you need your stuff to close a deal with a client, your HD burns out and you have to change it. On a weekend. Or Your guy is on holiday, or sailing... or his equally smallish web-hoster goes bust and he struggles to move his domain somwhere else. Or he finds a new job/girlfriend/interest... In a situation like that, the couple of hundreds of dollars that you have paid may well prove the smaller problem..

Case in Point: I was very much interested in HullCAO (www.hullcao.com) and sent an e-mail enquiry prior to ordering. Non answer. Followed up with serveral more mails over several weeks, still no answer. After 6 months I dug it out again and this time I found a phone number on teh website. Made an international call and got the guys mother who told me that he was very busy now with another project, got a new number and a new e-mail adress.

made another international call and got the guy himself, told him all, he was nice, VERY sorry, he had not had the time to fix some problem with his e-mail provider (6 months!), but he gave me a new mail address.

Against better judgement I sent my mail again.... and then waited another week (!!) for the answer. (remember, I wanted to BUY something, not ask annoying support questions!)

That program locks to the harddisk - and even if its very nice and very cheap indeed I would never invest my time and work in that. Still, lookslike a nice program - anybody else has better experiences with it?

The paranoid enforcement policies just don't work and will push their authors even more into niche markets. If for example FREEship and other more flexible products continue to evolve as they do now, I am afraid all the small authors that were more obsessed with protection than with market penetration can pack in and that's a pity. (Microsoft started enforcing activation very slowly, step by step and only AFTER they already owned the market.)


The other problem is that more and more people work on several machines. I work on 3 machines, at home, in the office and on a notebook when travelling. It's always me, and always the same projects - and I just could not afford to buy a dongle or locked password for each machine. The famous "single machine" is disappearing fast from a more flexible, networked world. In many licenses that has already given way for a more realistic "one-man/one-machine at any given time" restriction based on trust.

[chandler]

I used a demo of multisurf probably 10 years ago and it was instant wire frame hull. Very user friendly!
However I have tried to use the current demo recently and can't even get past the encription key, missing dlls etc.

[wdnboatbuilder]

A simple man looking for a simple program. All I want is to enter points on a grid much as a hard board but at the end with a model and calcs. Right now I have no program or I can not find my books on new wavesys. And would be looking for another program. One thing that might be in new waves favor is that they have teamed up with Westlawn and their product is used by most students. Does anyone use the Multi surf program? whats it like ? ect.........

[chandler]

As I posted before, I used a demo of multisurf 10 years ago. I'm an absolute retard when it comes to drafting programs, however my first experience with multisurf was mindless, punched in some numbers,voila, the wire frame I was looking for as well as being able to tweak it at will. Also as I stated before my recent attempt with thier demo, I couldn't get past the encription key. Could be my operating system? win98. I have free ship, so far it doesn't seem too input friendly, but as I said re re when it comes to drafting programs, I think I'll stick with a drafting table and pencil until the software producers come up with something really user friendly.