Can Rhino meet my needs?

[Tobias]

Hello everybody,

I'm a dutch yacht interior designer and builder working with motor- and sailing yachts from 15/22 m. Long years I worked with just pen and paper till I got a PC. Since that moment I want to build yacht interior with CAD and CNC.

Last year I got the chance to work on a nice system on a shipyard including Multisurf, Shipconstructor and AutoCAD. Most people here can imagine what kind of luxury that is. In that time I discovered what is possible and I succeeded in building two complete interiors with A LOT of help from the lucky owner of that system but all together its far too expencive for what I would use it for (just interior).
Now Im looking for the right piece of software for my own company.

What I get from my clients:

either... a 3d AutoCAD dwg with the spants as 3d-solids

or... a 2d AutoCAD dwg with sections as 2d-polylines


What I want to do:

• get the hull surface from the spants or sections (lofting)
• get an offset from that surface to the inside of the hull (like 70 mm for the spants and groundwood)
• using surface intersections and trimming to get the shapes of my sheets (like a wall intersects the hull)
• linking each object in the 3d file to a database of 2d drawings for the CNC machine (as possible with an automatic update if the 3d file has changed).
• the 2d output files should be in dwg format

Now my question is if Rhino maybe in combination with FastShip can do the job for me? Especially the linking of objects in a 3d file to a 2d database. Does anyone know?

thanks in advance

Tobias

[cgorton]

Tobias,
I don't think Rhino is going to do everything you are looking for. Having said that, I would still use it for yacht interiors.
Rhino is not parametric, so it will not adjust your intersections when you change a surface. But, it is so simple to draw in 3D that I think it is still faster. It depends on how many changes are made. It is also great for showing these changes to the prospective client by way of renderings.
It sounds like you are looking for something like Solidworks, which can link to other files (including Rhino) and re-generate the 2D drawings. This is fine in theory, but I don't see a need to model an interior with solids. Sure, it would be great to have weights and costs and 2D drawings, but the end question is will you be more effiecient using this amount of detail. I have seen that it is possible to do, but not necessarily efficient to do so.
Another reason I am wary of automatically updated files is that I foresee losing track of changes. When I make a change, I don't want another drawing to change without my knowing. Again, it's a matter of how disciplined you can afford to be.
Those are my thoughts. If I were you, I would download the Rhino demo (25 free saves) and do a short project as you would in practice. See if it can do what you need.

Craig

[Tobias]

Hi Craig,

This seems to be a really nice forum. Thankx for your quick answer.

I gathered as many information as i could about I don't know how many packages. SolidWorks was one of them. All this solids modeling packs seem to be optimized for mechanical engineering. They comes with dozens of features and model libraries witch I don't need. There seems to be nothing for poor woodworkers...

Me too I don't see a need to model an interior with solids. Actually I would even prefer to work from a surface with a thickness (like shipconstructor).

In the end you might be right that all what I want might be possible but if it would be efficient is another question. It worked all fine with the Multisurf, Shipconstructor and AutoCAD system but again it wouldn't be efficient for me (just too expensive for what I do).

So maybe I should have a deeper look at Rhino.

Thanx again for your answer

Tobias

[CGN]

There has been some comments about using solidworks and rhino here in the forum, have a look around you will find this one very interesting an helpful, for now I can recommend, if you plan in an investment, solidworks, rhino3d and expander, IMO they do work great.

touchcad is another good option, just have a look around the forum there is many discussions about this systems