Best Marine Design Software for Hull Modeling? (2007)

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Continued from Best Marine Design Software for Hull Modeling? (2006)

Which hull modeling programs do you use as your primary hull design software?

Autoship (Autoship Systems Corporation)

DefCar (DefCar Engineering)

Fastship (Proteus Engineering)

FreeShip

HullCAO (HullCAO)

Hull Form (Blue Peter Marine Systems)

Maxsurf (Formation Design Systems)

MultiSurf (Aerohydro)

Prolines (Vacanti Yacht Design)

ProSurf (New Wave Systems)

Rhino (Robert McNeel & Assoc.)

Naval Designer (US Sales by Forum Marine)

SeaSolution (SeaSolution)

TouchCAD (Lundström Design)

[westlawn5554X]

I have ProSurf so I voted on that, still waiting for Rhino ver 4.0, havent heard anything yet... , Vote anything I can get my hand on

[sieagel]

I use rhino, catia, Unigrafix, maxsurfe. and i can't decide wich is best owerall software. Depends wath you are working on. Evry one has advanteges and disadvanteges.

[Antisthenes]

glad to see people know RHinoceros is the best

i made my first STARR ship in Rhino beta 1 back in 1995

when even then it calculated 16 decimal places

[sieagel]

In my experiance Rhino is most simpl to use but it calculates only to two decimal places. So it's not so accurate. Others are much more exact

[HAMMAD AHMED]

I have used HULLPAK(HULL-PAKISTAN) for the very few boats/floating jetties that I have designed. This is the software I made during my MSc and has been used for quiet some time in UCL. Due to its limitations, the hullform requires revision in autocad or on floor. Believe it or not, we still use the basic technique and make complete hullform on a floor for fairing.
I though have also used PARAMARINE(old GODDESS) AND MAXSURF.

[Steve Baer]

Originally Posted by sieagel

In my experiance Rhino is most simpl to use but it calculates only to two decimal places. So it's not so accurate. Others are much more exact

This is simply not true. Please read the following web page for a description of Rhino's accuracy.

http://www.rhino3d.com/accuracy.htm

Thanks,
-Steve

[marshmat]

Originally Posted by sieagel

In my experiance Rhino is most simpl to use but it calculates only to two decimal places. So it's not so accurate. Others are much more exact

When you add dimensions to a Rhino drawing, they are usually to two decimal places by default. This is easy to change (control is in the file properties window). The model itself, is done to just about the highest precision that a 32-bit computer can handle without seriously slowing down; any object in the model is effectively good to at least fifteen significant digits. On a 10 m boat, Rhino can easily go to a precision of a hundred microns, if you want it to. Or even one micron, if you're that anal about precision.

[Antisthenes]

I first read the post and got a quote from the Rhinoceros page but I see Steve who I hope is adding the last needed things to rhinoceros for v4 release(paperspace objects to pagelayoutspace) beat me to it...

http://www.rhino3d.com/comments.htm

[vpkumar]

Dear Sirs,

I find in the polls, users have voted based on the cost of the hull and not the features. I agree that a cheap software may be useful in many ways. But you cant vote out a software because it is expensive.

Can anyone tell me whether DEFCAR is better or Maxsurf.
Is there any scientific comparison on these two rather expensive softwares.

V.P.Kumar

[vpkumar]

Dear sirs,

I find that the users have voted the the cheapest and not the best ship design software. I agree that a cheap design software is useful. But just because a software is expensive you cannot vote it out.

Can anyone tell be whether DEFCAR or MAXSURF is better. Is there a scientific comparison of the two softwares available.

V.P.Kumar

[Leo Lazauskas]

Originally Posted by vpkumar

Dear sirs,

I find that the users have voted the the cheapest and not the best ship design software. I agree that a cheap design software is useful. But just because a software is expensive you cannot vote it out.

Can anyone tell be whether DEFCAR or MAXSURF is better. Is there a scientific comparison of the two softwares available.

V.P.Kumar

Better for what?

What kind of scientific comparison would satisfy you? Calculation of volumes and surface areas? I'd love to see the comparisons myself because I often need exact geometries to test hydrodynamic calculations and these are not always available in CAD packages. For example, Free!ship doesn't give exact results for a standard Wigley hull. Sure you can get close with some quantities, but not exact.

If you also want scientific comparisons of, for example, the resistance of a hull, then you are on very shaky ground with most packages advertised on this board. Some codes like MaxSurf show comparisons with experiments, however they are often very selective about what they show so as to make their codes look good or better than others. For example, MaxSurf shows the excellent comparison with estimates of (inviscid) wave resistance for Wigley hulls but does not show comparisons of total drag for some hulls. Comparisons made with Michlet for example, show that Maxsurf seems superior on a wave resistance basis for the NPL series, but they do not show the total drag which includes skin friction as well as the hydrostatic resistance on transom sterns. Sometimes apples are compared with oranges!

For wave patterns the situation is even worse than for resistance. Some codes like Splash can be tweaked to give excellent agreement with experimental wave patterns over a pre-defined domain, but if you calculate outside of that domain, sometimes there are no waves at all.

Good luck! I hope that you find some scientific comparisons and that you post them here. I'd love to see some kind of objective comparison for a lot of the codes that are both praised and damned on this board.

Best regards,
Leo.

[Raggi_Thor]

Different tools for different tasks.
A Norwegian program SHIPSHAPE (http://www.lodic.no/pages/shipshape.htm) is better than NAPA (www.napa.fi) regarding exact calculations of wetted surface etc, but it's not very user friendly. Both cost quite a lot. So for large ships and full time designers (full paid time :-), use the "best", for small boats and part time projects, use the ones you can afford (or justify).

[Leo Lazauskas]

Originally Posted by Raggi_Thor

Different tools for different tasks.
A Norwegian program SHIPSHAPE (http://www.lodic.no/pages/shipshape.htm) is better than NAPA (www.napa.fi) regarding exact calculations of wetted surface etc, but it's not very user friendly. Both cost quite a lot. So for large ships and full time designers (full paid time :-), use the "best", for small boats and part time projects, use the ones you can afford (or justify).

No argument there!

But when you say "better" regarding wetted surface, how do you know that? Ships are not mathematical objects so there is no real measure of which code does a better job. I wonder how do they perform on spheres, parabolic struts and spheroids which do have exact wetted surface areas. I suspect that it depends on the gridding.

Regards,
Leo.

[tri - star]

Long ago - more years back, than I care to remember.....

I attempted to get an early computer program to
help me with a catamaran power boat design.
It did not like it..........At all.
The computer kept trying to pull the two hulls together.
This program, that shall remain nameless, was
obviously designed by a monohull traditionalist.........

So....Many people on this thread have stated that one
program is better suited for some tasks than others.

Therefore, we will very much appreciate it, if anyone
can suggest specificaly;
- the best ones for MULTI - HULL engineering ?
Specific concerns includ:
Hydrodynamic resistance predictions, beam strength analysis
and total global analysis of an entire stucture.

We do not believe in being penny wise with such important
tools, so we need to know what is the best. Not neccessarily
- the cheapest or - most popular.

Also, USER FRIENDLY is always a concern. Speaking of such
- what has happened to MacSurf ? Or is that what MaxSurf is ?
We are about to make a major capitol cost upgrade, in order
to take on a major project. So good advice is needed at this time.

Much thanks for your expert assistance.