FREE!Ship 2.2 released

The new version of Martijn Van Engeland's FREE!Ship is now available.

The latest version of this marvellous program offers several major enhancements, including a very sensitive shaded Gaussian curvature routine that quickly exposes unwanted lumps, hollows and flat spots on the hull.

www.freeship.org

 

This is getting better and better

 

I'm a little confused with the Guassian Curvature system, I don't understand what the colors mean, could you shed some light? Thanks.

Tim

 

Nice!

 

A little simplified, gaussian curvature is the product of the curvature in two different directions, so if the gaussian curvature is zero, the surface can be developable.

 

What it means, in practise, is that bumps and craters on the hull -- areas of sharp Gaussian curvature -- will tend to show up as red or dark orange swatches. Flat spots on a round bilge -- areas of low Gaussian curvature -- will show blue or green. The less curvature, the cooler the colour. A smooth gradation from one colour to the next on the "spectrum" indicates a fair hull. It's a dandy tool.

 

The new version has both a Gaussian display and a "developability" display. I understand what the Gaussian is indicating, but mu hull model is almost all dark red for developability... what does that mean?

Also, I'm so far unable to get the resistance models to give me output. My hulls are skinny catamaran hulls - maybe beyond the ranges of the models?

 

Most hulls are not developable.

 

That they are not developable. They are curved in two directions.

Most likely.
For skinny hulls i would use Michlet

Anders M

PS Have you downloaded the new manual?

 

Yes, I downloaded the new manual after posting and indeed I am outside the parameters for those two models.

I've opened Michelet once but it scared me. Haven't spent the time to get familiar with it yet. I'm going to export my hull to Michelet now and see if I can make sense of it.

Thanks for the info!

 

Michlet is not nearly as scaring as it looks
I also were apprehensive but it was quite easy to use after reading the manual.

Anders M

 

"after reading the manual"

Oh THAT again! Gosh this learnin's hard work!

 

Can I make cruise model with it? Sorry because I'm a new user.

 

Sure, you can make just about anything in Freeship. Here is a link to a group that provides a few (and growing) tutorials in the links and files sections. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Freeship_HTandT_Group/ Be sure you also have the manual to look up the commands and procedures until you become familiar with the software. Martjin tends to come out with an update or new version every 6-10 weeks or so, after recieving feedback from users. Downloading the updated manual is also a must.

Steve

 

Indeed you can... current version of the manual even includes a VW Beetle!
To all who are scared of Michelet, you need not be so frightened! It freaked me out too, the first time- you need to use Windows Explorer to load files and Notepad for input? And what's with the GUI? Then you skim the manual and it all comes clear.... can easily get started like so: in Freeship, file>export>michlet, copy the resulting file to the Michlet directory and call it in.mlt, open michlet- and you're up and running. Plenty more functionality if you read for 10 minutes... but it's a remarkably stable and powerful program and not nearly as scary as it looks. (I've been trying it with Photoshop to get pretty plots of my boat's wake at different speeds.... wonder if I could animate them....)