Step by step to design your boat!

[lewisboats]

Originally Posted by peter radclyffe

is that your opinion of me

Woah!...not going there.... apparently there was a missssscommunication. I saw your location was ELBA and simply thought an exchange of banter pertaining to Napoleon's exile would be interesting. Not a reference to you or your lineage or anything else liable to excite anything other than mild interest in a thread communication. Please forget I mentioned it. The only reason I know anything about it is thru Xword puzzles and an education in Quebequois french as a kid.

Steve

[peter radclyffe]

Originally Posted by lewisboats

Woah!...not going there.... apparently there was a missssscommunication. I saw your location was ELBA and simply thought an exchange of banter pertaining to Napoleon's exile would be interesting. Not a reference to you or your lineage or anything else liable to excite anything other than mild interest in a thread communication. Please forget I mentioned it.

Steve

please excuse me Steve, i misunderstood you

[peter radclyffe]

Originally Posted by apex1

None, if you really follow my advice! Not much more if you go professional. But up to 15% of the total construction cost if you become fancy.

thank you , i learn a lot from your posts

[lewisboats]

please excuse me Steve, i misunderstood you

Whew...for a moment there I thought I had stepped on IT...and that is a painful experience....I know (i've done it more than once!)

So,,,, how different is Elba from Sicily? I was stationed at Comiso for year and still remember it fondly

[peter radclyffe]

Originally Posted by lewisboats

Whew...for a moment there I thought I had stepped on IT...and that is a painful experience....I know!

So,,,, how different is Elba from Sicily? I was stationed at Comiso for year and still remember it fondly

i havent been to sicily, elba is laid back, not much work, so instead of all the bla bla, ive tried to create some work by designing & building a 20ft day boat, im interested in teaching apprentices because the old hull forms are dying out, & theres not a lot for young folks to do in winter,

[lewisboats]

Sounds like a good place to keep traditions going. What kind of hulls are there floating around? I have this great picture that I call "paradise" ...it is of a smaller boat that I suspect is floating in some cove in the Med or Aegean or somewhere in that neighborhood. it has a couple-three guys kickin back and 'laxin' in this beautiful emerald green shallows under a cliff...hell...why should I describe it when I can post it? THIS is wanna be ME!

[peter radclyffe]

Originally Posted by lewisboats

Sounds like a good place to keep traditions going. What kind of hulls are there floating around? I have this great picture that I call "paradise" ...it is of a smaller boat that I suspect is floating in some cove in the Med or Aegean or somewhere in that neighborhood. it has a couple-three guys kickin back and 'laxin' in this beautiful emerald green shallows under a cliff...hell...why should I describe it when I can post it? THIS is wanna be ME!

thats about it, double-ended gozzo's, 10-40 ft, a lot of people are too zapped by the heat to do much,

[lewisboats]

OH....the envy...! This is a desktop on one of my computers. Every time I see it I wish I was there! Do you have any pictures of the local craft and yours please?

[apex1]

Originally Posted by lewisboats

Whew...for a moment there I thought I had stepped on IT...and that is a painful experience....I know (i've done it more than once!)

So,,,, how different is Elba from Sicily? I was stationed at Comiso for year and still remember it fondly

Hey guys
there are several drivel threads around here! This was not meant to be the # 199

PM is another function you could use to share your valuable adventures!

Tonight we have the next lesson.

[lewisboats]

Sorry...just chit-chatting while we wait.

[apex1]

Ok dear fellow members, lets try our next round.
First we choose a design in Carlson.hul as mentioned above. I suppose you did already more than that, but thats what we are here for. To make the game easy I suggest to open the "Bazcat1" file, so we have all the same model to work on.
Open "Freeship" / import (not open), the file.
you now see this screen:




to work with the different views you can maximise the one to work on, than minimize to have all four on screen again. In further steps I will refer to the different views as: UL for upper left, UR for ? yes,- and LL / LR respectively.

We now have a multi chine cat boat of about 6,7m length. Both is not what we want, we want a 16m round bilge boat.
First we scale it up: click Transform / scale, choose 2,5 / 2,1 / 2,1 to scale the hull inhomogenous.
Go to Project / settings and change the settings to metric Open the next tab Main Dimensions and change the values to: 16.5 / 4.9 / 0.65 to have simpler figures.

this is what we see know:



Now look at the LR window, you see the some hydrostatic info, one is the displacement it says something around 13.5 tonnes and you see the draft is not 65cm but 69 cm !?
Yes this is a clever programme it knows you bring more sixpacks than calculated and your spouse has overweight!
Of course you have calculated and estimated the weight of all your hull, deck, superstructure, equipment and the like, by so far, so you know that you have a displacement of about 14.5 tonnes at the end!? Remember: one table knife is about 170 gram (if yours is lighter it is not Silver), a sixpack about 4 kg. The draft at around 68 cm (bare hull) will give us the right displ. (the prog.s algorithm makes it 72 in this case)
You will have to change these settings later many times while the hull shape changes. So, do´nt bother now.
Remember: designing is mainly erasing!
We now get rid of the chines. Open LR view and switch the control net on (always work in the single half of hull mode only).
The uppermost edge is our deck and we do´nt touch it now, the next one shows a Hard chine, we select the complete line from Stern to Bow by clicking the first (we always refer to the stern as point Zero) edge line while the ctrl. button is pushed. The line appears yellow. Now press the "switch select edges between normal and crease mode" button. Press "esc" button to deselect edges, colour changes. Now change all 5 edges to normal.
and:





well, what you see on your screen is different? Yes I made the next step already, I gave the junk some frames. Open the window for editing frames, buttocks, waterlines by clicking the "cheese knife and the blue toast" button, click the waste paper basket to delete existing frames, click the next button to the left to add multiple frames, a window opens, choose the spacing (here 1m). You can do the same for buttocks diagonals etc. If you rescale your model (and you will), you have to do this step again, so do´nt bother now, do the correct spacing after you have finished the model.

Lets change the shape of this ugly sampan now. As you can see in the UL the model has a keel. We change the size later. Right click in the UL and change mode to gaussian you have it in 3d view now. You can move and rotate the hull by pressing the scroll button on your mouse and moving it. Switch to both sides of model to have a better impression, deselect all frames, waterlines etc. You see there are some "stress edges" you have to fair.
Switch to LR and turn control net on. Click one of the edge points at the transom, a window appears showing the position of this point. Click into the y axis window and change the value, press return, the point has moved. Edit undo! This is one way to move a point, the other way is more convenient. Select a point, then click the up, down, left, right arrow on your keyboard. The point is moved by one increment! Edit undo! in the lower bar of the prog. is the actual increment distance shown, click on it to change the value to the most convenient for the task choosen.
Now refine all the control points / lines to the shape you like. Do´nt forget to make a deeper keel and to narrow it at the bow.
Make a noise next year when finished!!!

To be continued soon.

[apex1]

Originally Posted by lewisboats

Sorry...just chit-chatting while we wait.

I would like if we could make this thread a real assistance for a complete novice. We have some young members (from 13 up) here that really could enjoy having a step by step advice. And I would enjoy having you as one of the contributors to correct and complement my efforts.

If we keep the thread straight and clean I am sure we soon have a pretty good beginners tutorial. And when we come to the more advanced part of the game I hope some experts will chime in and share their knowledge.


Regards
Richard

[lewisboats]

Just one note for now...for us neanderthals who still like to use the imperial or standard system...to change your units to feet. lbs and Tons go to project, Project settings and change from metric to standard. If you see a hull that you like but it is 16m long, 4m wide and 1.1m deep and you would like to import it but have it 16 ft long, 4 ft wide and 1.1 ft deep...import it, change to feet then immediately go to Transform, Scale, keep all layers selected and then put .3048 for the values in each of the dimensions and click ok. It will ask if you want to adjust markers...say yes. The hull will not look like it changed but it will now measure 16x4x1.1 ft. You may have to adjust your waterline because that was not scaled the same way.

Steve

Apex1: so far so good...

Now refine all the control points / lines to the shape you like. Do´nt forget to make a deeper keel and to narrow it at the bow.

But shouldn't there some explanation as to why things should be shaped in certain ways? Like why the keel must be deepened, what it is used for, how it should be shaped for hydrostatic reasons, where the CLR should be, etc?

[apex1]

Originally Posted by lewisboats

But shouldn't there some explanation as to why things should be shaped in certain ways? Like why the keel must be deepened, what it is used for, how it should be shaped for hydrostatic reasons, where the CLR should be, etc?

Yes, sure mate, but that needs a deeper insight in the subject matter which I assume is not there on average. (at least not whithin my target group of novices) This is just a sample hull, nothing to be built ever.
And adding too much of technical background (if any) to the "first step" tutorial is by far more effort than I can make!
I have to make my shabby living besides this job, and begging in the roads is not easy nowadays.

But as mentioned above, as soon as we have managed to produce some sort of "buildable" shape, I would like to leave the further step to next step, tutorial to the better skilled part of our audience.

And thanks for the contribution! Exactly that way I had in mind when starting this thread, to supplement with others advice!

Regards
Richard

[apex1]

Originally Posted by Manie B

i love it - Apex1 well done

dont forget a chapter on CAD and how to import freeship into CAD

Not to stress your patience Manie.

The last step before the third:
If you are finished with your incredible junk.

You have several choices to destroy your effort in using a CAD programme for further steps.
First save your drawing as usual, then "export" it either as: 3d mesh, 3d polylines, or 2d polylines, all in DXF format understood by most CAD prog.s

But now there is a trick! Freeship exports only what you can see on the screen! So, the more details are seen there i.e. waterlines, buttocks the more information is send to your dxf file. And where a 2d poly file is just a handfull of bytes, a 3d mesh with highest resolution gaussian rendering can easily be 5 mega. Bear that in mind when you need just a brief overview how it may look in your CAD.

Regards
Richard