Prosurf

[Eric Sponberg]

There was an inquiry on the Liability thread asking about Prosurf, and do I use it, what do I think about it.

Yes, I do use Prosurf, and I like it a lot. It is not perfect, but none of the surface modelling programs are. However, I have become quite adept at using it.

I find the line control and fairing techniques the best of any program out there. And the nice thing about it is that it has the hydrostatics and stability calculations with automatic sinkage and trim resolution built into the program. You do not need another program like GHS to do the hydro-stability (which I understand does not have automatic sinkage and trim resolution). Prosurf also includes damaged stability, so you can do scenarios of flooding situations to calculate remaining sinkage, trim, and buoyancy.

Prosurf does not have some of the control bells and whistles that other programs have. For example, I am very used to using cursor control, view control, and object control in AutoCad and in Rhino, but they are not as sophisticated in Prosurf. Also, the hydrostatic and stability calculation modules are still operating in the DOS version, not the windows version, but as long as you understand how they work, you can deal with it just fine. Finally, the built-in renderer in Prosurf is not that great, and I get better result in Rhino/Flamingo.

The author of the program, Steve Hollister, lives nearby in Jamestown, RI, and so he is very close at hand if anything goes wrong. He has been a friend for many years, and he is a fellow University of Michigan grad. He has a naval architecture degree from UofM, plus two masters degrees from there, one in hydrodynamics, the other in electrical/computer science I believe. As a result, Prosurf is the best all-around naval architecture surface modeller that I have seen out in the market.

If you (or anyone reading this wants to know more), you can go to the Prosurf website at www.newavesys.com and download a demo of the program.

Eric

I

i apreciate your response it gives me a great idea of what i can achive with prosurf, thanks a lot

[mmd]

I use ProSurf in my design office as well, and have been very pleased with the program. Steve has been very patient and helpfull in helping me out of my boneheaded mistakes. I strongly endorse the product.