Best Marine Design Software for Hull Modeling? (2011)

[Admin]

Continued from Best Marine Design Software for Hull Modeling? (2010)

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

• Autoship (Autoship Systems Corporation)
  
• DefCar (DefCar Engineering)
  
• Delftship
  
• Fastship
  
• HullCAO (HullCAO)
  
• HullForm (Blue Peter Marine Systems)
  
• Maxsurf (Formation Design Systems)
  
• MultiSurf (Aerohydro)
  
• Napa
  
• Naval Designer
  
• NX
  
• Prolines (Vacanti Yacht Design)
  
• ProSurf (New Wave Systems)
  
• Rhino (Robert McNeel & Assoc.)
  
• Naval Designer (US Sales by Forum Marine)
  
• SeaSolution (SeaSolution)
  
• TouchCAD (Lundström Design)
  

[Leo Lazauskas]

Michlet, Flotilla and, best of all, the wonderful Gnu Scientific Library.

[zeroname]

Rhino, Maxsurf, Autoship and hopeful for NAPA this year to put into my fav list.

[yipster]

Best Marine Design Software for Hull Modeling? (2011)
if it was only hull modeling i'd say rhino, and there is orca, but maxsurf has the more complete design package i belive

[PI Design]

Hi,

Can you add Paramarine to the list?

Happy new year everyone!

[bbsboat]

maxsurf for hull and rhino for deck

[timo]

?! How do you know if you are not familiar with most of them?
I use Solidworks because thats what I learnt to use during my studies.
I think Solidworks is very user friendly. I have used Solidedge & Rhino - I definatley think SW is better. One thing I would like to know though - SW does not seem to have a tool that can convert organic/ 3d shape to patterns, except for the sheet metal feature which I either don't know how to use or it can only convert box shapes. If these other programs can convert 3d shapes to flat patterns - which for instance would be useful for planking or RIB tubes- i would like to know.

[bernd1972]

I´m surprised there are still hullform users around. I mean it´s a great program for doing a quick & dirty drawing/lines plan, but then you´re quite finished with it. No fancy rendering stuff and so on, no reasonable options to go on and do a complete design in one program. Quite retro.
Nevertheless, I like it, it´s so simple and convinient for doing the first step.

[Felix Muehlhoff]

Bernd,

I'm not only a hullform user. As I wrote years ago I'm using Siemens NX for the whole design and production process of ships and I'm still happy with it. For hydrostatics and damage calculations I'm using Paramarine because there is a direct link to NX using the Parasolid.

Grüße

Felix

[amariner]

Rhinomarine 401 for design and hydrostatics. sometime maxsurf for hydrostatics to compare

[Dean Smith]

Originally Posted by Leo Lazauskas

Michlet, Flotilla and, best of all, the wonderful Gnu Scientific Library.

Leo
If you were a builder and not a Guru (not gnu) and you had no real training, where then would you begin?
Can you explain why you prefer such , in simple language please.

[Leo Lazauskas]

Originally Posted by Dean Smith

Leo
If you were a builder and not a Guru (not gnu) and you had no real training, where then would you begin?
Can you explain why you prefer such , in simple language please.

As usual, it all depends on what you want to achieve with the software.

I would choose a free version of one of the most popular ones so far to see if it is roughly what I need. I would prefer one that has an online forum where users can exchange plans easily, and where beginners can have their questions answered promptly by other users and the owners of the software.

I would also recommend that beginners be prepared to spend many hours learning how to use the program. Don't dump (e.g. Freeship, Delftship or Maxsurf) from consideration before spending less than 10 hours playing with them. Of course, not everyone has the luxury of being able to spend that sort of time on learning new programs, but it will take at least that long for an absolute beginner to learn the basics and to produce a decent rendition of a simple hull from scratch. (Just my uninformed opinion, of course).

Good luck!
Leo.

[Dean Smith]

Thanks
using Freeship I developed some very fair decks using my old freehand way
Drew in crown H, divided 1/2beam by three , used factors.8818 and .5393 Of H and put a point at each and then curve network , from sheer and crown and all those points joined
I have r4 and max 13 . I think maybe I am too ancienne to hold this stuff in my head.
I am not alone in this i personally worked with some brilliant long time yacht designers, who could not adapt either.
i use rhino for structure and because i prefer cut from a fully lofted body plan and not use cut files, I have no use for maxsurf workshop. I actually think , well not think--I know that for one offs CAD adds to time
maybe I should add to that
Add to cost for experienced builder of small ship
Say I had lines from you and knew they were fair
I would lift the body plan and draw say 40 frames in two days. with structure.
i would bend the frames from T or Angle CAD would be of no assistance in this
But the key is taking offsets from a designer , are they accurate. The first time I did this I ran some diags and then say if a buttock and wl intersection on the body were only say 8mm apart, then you knew your man had it right--when your batten clicked!!!

[Kestrel]

It, obviously, depends on what kind of matters you are dealing with. We are involved since a long time on R&D applied to planing stepped hull, specially, for which we use SUPHAD (http://www.idet.it/idra.html). For CAD modelling, many solutions mentioned here are good. We use Thinkdesign, (Think3), since this is our standard tool for different engineering applications.

regards
K.

[F3M4]

Sketchup(in the tutorial I just posted) should be a viable option, especially at the cost.