Rhino v. Surfaceworks/Solidworks

[J.Rhodes]

Hello. I am a boat designer in progress. I have decent experience with Surfaceworks and enjoy the surface modeling freedom it provides me. I am thinking of investing more in my software and I do not know if I should upgrade my current surfaceworks/solidworks programs or start fresh with Rhino.
Rhino seems to be popular but I know Surfaceworks. I searched the message board for surfaceworks reviews and found little.

Does anybody have any advice? Any comments are appreciated.

[CGN]

I will upgrade SurfaceWorks/Solidworks and buy rhino, use it as a platform for rendering, or translating files, I won't say surfacing because I guess you are comfortable whit what you have now, but if rendering and translating files is not an issue upgrade and buy Flattener instead.

[J.Rhodes]

I hear that. It seems Rhino (and add-ins) has powerful rendering capabilities. What is Flattener?
Thank you for your reply.
Jesse

[Caldera Boats]

IMOA, The Surfaceworks/Solidworks is a very good combo. Solidworks is a lot more powerful than Rhino. Rhino is kinda old-school, while SW uses the latest modeling techniques. The ease at which SW can make a part or assembly into a drawing is excellent.
I use a combination of FREEShip/Solidworks/Surfacesworks. This has made full solid model rendering and final drawings a matter of days rather than weeks or months.

[CGN]

Hi Rhodes,

Check the Aerohydro site they have a program for plate development called flattener, that works with surfaceworks.

And about the rendering capabilities for rhino, yes, rhino finally has some support form Vray and Brazil rendering engines that are very powerful, don't go with Flamingo I think for the price/results ratio I will go with Vray.

But if you don't need that much power from rhino, for rendering check carrara pro v5, lower cost than Rhino/Vray combination, very powerful rendering and quite good translator, and at the half the cost of Rhino/Vray.

[J.Rhodes]

I am glad I posted this thread. The learning curve is now not quite as steep. I am going to check Carrara proV5. Compatibility is key.
Thanks again guys.
Jesse

[Caldera Boats]

One more note I should add about Solidworks. It has a nice feature called 'lofted sheet' which is primarily used in sheet metal developement, but I have found this to be very useful in creating flat patterns for hull panels and strakes.
It is possible to design the hull with 3d solid model strakes, say 1/2 thick marine ply, and then flatten them to 2d geometery that can be used for cutting with a CNC router.

[antonfourie]

So how much does SolidWorks cost ?

[CGN]

I think around 3500-4000 US dollars, "basic" version

[antonfourie]

I guess that I will have to make do with TurboCAD and Freeship for the moment.

[Raggi_Thor]

Try Rhino as well, the free demo lets you save 25 times (or more :-).
If you want parametric solid modelling, Alibre Design is quite simmilar to Sold Works at fraction of the cost, and Alibre Xpress is completely free. Alibre opens Rhino files as "surface features" that can be used in your solid models.
Yes I am also selling it :-)

[Robbi]

Hi there!

Interesting discussion about using solidworks in marine design.

Our company that build aluminum boats switched also recently to
solidworks as the main 3D software. Nice to have a parametric 3D design
software with history. I think the history is also found in SurfaceWorks.

Could Raggi_Thor tell more about using FreeShip/SurfaceWorks/SolidWorks?

I think FreeShip could be something to do the preliminary desing in.

(This SOFTWARE forum should be divided into some subforums like RHINO, SOLIDWORKS, HULL MODELLING, CFD, FEM, etc)

Regards,
Robbi

[Chris Ostlind]

Call me Old School if you want, but I just don't get the reference from Caldera regarding Rhino in that classification. Solidworks is in a seperate class of design software from Rhino. As soon as you engage parametrics in the software scene, you jump into much bigger dollars. Rhino comes at the problem differently and it's apparent that it works well, or so many NA shops and boat design outfits wouldn't be using it.

Is there an on-going fee to stay connected to the software after you have already plunked down the 5 large to get the package? Is the learning curve any easier now that you've paid the money for the higher-end stuff? Does your prospective clientele say, "Ohhhh, my, these renderings are so much better than the ones out of Rhino." ?

It's my opinon that it's tough enough to make a living out of the small boat design business. Throwing large amounts of start-up dollars at software while expecting that expenditure to start creating cash flow is not a good business decision.

These are just a few of the issues to be addressed for the smaller scale designer in the trade.

So, I'd say different school rather than old school and at this point in my career, Rhino is a real opportunity to have powerful modeling tools for what ends-up being very reasonable prices. I don't do boats over 25' right now and the really high horsepower packages are just not justified from my perspective.

Chris Ostlind

[Caldera Boats]

Rhino has its place as does pencil and paper. It really depends on what you prefer.
For me, Soldworks has been the best $5600.00 I ever spent. The learning curve was not too difficult. Once I got proficient at using it, I have had more drafting work than I can handle (other stuff besides boats). It pays for itself in no-time. Also remeber that any software used in your business can be considered a write-off business expense, so why not get the best?

Freeship is great for drawing up designs, kinda like a very powerful digital sketch pad.

[Raggi_Thor]

I don't know SolidWorks to well, but I did work with Autodesk Inventor for several years. Alibre Design as parametric and has many of the same features as Inventor. In addition, you have the link to Rhino. So you can make the hull in Rhino and the internal structure (paramtric) in Alibre.

I think SolidWorks and Inventor rely on Iges import for surfaces (?).