Cad for dummies??

[captword]

I come from a boat builing family that could draw lines on a napkin and then turn around and build it. we have been mostly remodeling boats for the past 7 or eight years. I have a customer than wants me to build the whole boat wich is fine by me. i know what he wants and i can build it no problem there. the problem is that i cant show him in enough detail on paper for his eyes. and he would also like several diferent layouts down below. that is painstaking work to keep redrawing all the lines. i am learning on maxsurf at the moment, or tryng. In my eyes i have made great strides learning to use the computer to come up with the lines that i have. I know that it is applying my mathematics to fine tune it. my questions are: is there a better tuttorial to help me through the basics? at the moment i am only using the demo to learn and the manuel might help. how much will it help? is there a cad for dummies that applies to boat cad? i want to learn to use the software. some of my competition is using it and then sending a demo email to the prospective customer that they can view in 3d and see what they are getting. any help out there.

[CGN]

Rhino has a CD for Marine Design, but for marine design or hull design using cad i haven't seen anything like it (full book, i have seen some tutorials only). only books that explain nurbs for hull surfacing but i think those are not the ones you are looking for, maybe someone here in theh forum will know.

good luck

[captword]

thank you fro the reply gonna try and download it this afternoon. with what it costs to buy these programs, one must try all the the demos one can. not being as experienced with boat cads as i am. it is a jungle. i do have ex. in house cad. thanks for the tip.
word

[CGN]

Originally Posted by captword

thank you fro the reply gonna try and download it this afternoon. with what it costs to buy these programs, one must try all the the demos one can. not being as experienced with boat cads as i am. it is a jungle. i do have ex. in house cad. thanks for the tip.
word

TouchCad has an online movie of how to create a sailboat using touchcad, is really good, the principle of how is done is aplicable for most of the hull shape software.

TouchCad is really good but IMO needs some more features.

[Andrew Mason]

We have a Maxsurf tutorial document that we use in conjunction with Maxsurf training courses. you are welcome to a copy of this if you like. It is a large pdf file (about 3 Mb I think), contact me at AndyM@formsys.com if you would like me to email it to you.