Rhino/Solidworks hull modeling

[mattbyrne]

Boat building using CAD is new to so please help me/bear with me.

I purchase some plans for a 28' gentlemens runabout and am in the process of producing a full set of cad drawings. Here's my plan. Use Rhino to produce a solid of a faired hull. Import the solid into solidworks, where I will create all detailed part(frames, keel, stem, etc). My intent is to have parts machined on CNC macine.

At present I have managed to produce a surfaced hull in Rhino. I am having the following issues - I have created 6 diffrent surfaces 2-bottoms, 2-sides, 1-Deck, and 1-transome surface. When I created the surfaces I use 2-rail loft. On the bottom and the deck between the 1st station and where the lofting rails come to a point, Rino didn't create any surface. The surface stops at the last station. Am I using the wrong sufacing tool? Should I be creating one surface for the entire bottom?

When creating the curves for the frame stations and the keel, chine and sheer profiles, what type of curve(tool) should I be using.

How much "Fairing" should I expect to do when taking offsets from professional plans?

Once I have the solid inportedinto Solidworks(if this is the correct process) How do I slice the solid at each frame so I can get an outside profile of the frame.

Can anyone give me a quick relality check on what I attemting? A quick overview of the 3d modeling process would be nice also.

Thanks
Matt

[Cian Groves]

Hi Mat,
A couple of things that I do when using Rhino for marine designing.
1. Reduce the amount of curve control points to a minimum (both long. & trans.),which are used to make the hull surfaces to achieve the hull form you are after.
2. To check surface fairness use surface analyses tools & traditional method of projecting curves through the hull to product sections.
3. When trimming & joining surfaces check polysurface for bad objects.

In your case it sounds like you are wanting to define a hard chine vessel, as you found out 2 rail sweep will produce a surface between your defining curves only. You may want to experiment with network surface. Degree of fairing is up to you?, sometimes it is easier to make a half model. You can also determine the trans. frames/bkhd by projecting a curve onto the surface of your hull.

Hope this helps and I have explained myself plainly enough.

Cheers,
Cian