Transform 2D plan into 3D object

[Steve Hollister]

I have a number of customers that use CADKEY with our ProSurf program and like it very well. To do more sophisticated curve and surface work in CADKEY, however, you really need to buy their add-on called FASTSURF($995, I think). It is very capable, but I don't believe that it is a full trimmed NURB surface modeling program. You may have some "glitches" transferring the geometry to/from a NURB-based program.

The big reverse engineering software (Raindrop Geomagic, Paraform, etc.) have all of the bells and whistles, like fitting NURB surfaces to cloud points of data, but they also cost $10,000 - $20,000+++. Some low cost programs, like CADKEY FASTSURF, ProSurf and Rhino, have many reverse engineering functions that might do everything that you need. For boats, the biggest needs are to read in point, polyline, and curve data, create curves from the points and polylines, then to skin or loft a NURB surface through a set of curves. Depending on how nice the original curves are, you may or may not have to "fix up" the surface shape. You can then look for commands that can automatically smooth a surface and commands that allow you to have detailed shape control and fairing over the surface.

In ProSurf for the boat/ship people, we have added input commands to be able to read station hull file formats like SHCP, GHS, and simple TXT file formats. Then you can automatically loft/skin the station curves with NURB surfaces, even if the curves have chine knuckle points. This allows you to skin a set of curves that contain "knuckle" points, thereby creating multiple NURB surfaces with one command.

The difficulty of going from 2D --> 3D NURB surfaces depends a lot on the complexity of the 3D shape and how accurately you want to match that shape.

Steve Hollister
New Wave Systems

[cestes]

On the subject of recreating accurate representations of hulls, I have been using Rhino since release 1.0 and have had phenomenal success with Rhino.

It can create, accurately any shape, not just the hull. Most users of high-end marine software still lean on Rhino to fill in the gaps in the Marine software.

Yes, Stephen, I, too am a Rhino reseller and trainer, but more importantly, I am a very satisfied user. One example of Rhino's accumen was a small, lightweight skiff similar to a 49'er.

The designer had gotten "sort of close" and had 50 builders worldwide building. When a shop stepped up to build the skiff commercially, he demanded professionally faired lines to represent the original lines +/- 0.10".

We were able to produce the finished model for less than $1000.00 and the client was extremely happy.

Rhino is the only modeler I've seen that offers all the tools needed to model complete boats. Most offer this or that whiz-bang feature, but none offers everything.

Rhino's major shortcoming is the inability to shell a hull. You composite hull designers would like to be able to specify hull thickness, which varies over the length and depth of the hull. Maybe in R4???

[cestes]

Sorry, my previous post was intended for another message. Oops. :-(

[cestes]

On the subject of recreating accurate representations of hulls, I have been using Rhino since release 1.0 and have had phenomenal success with Rhino.

It can create, accurately any shape, not just the hull. Most users of high-end marine software still lean on Rhino to fill in the gaps in the Marine software.

Yes, Stephen, I, too am a Rhino reseller and trainer, but more importantly, I am a very satisfied user. One example of Rhino's accumen was a small, lightweight skiff similar to a 49'er.

The designer had gotten "sort of close" and had 50 builders worldwide building. When a shop stepped up to build the skiff commercially, he demanded professionally faired lines to represent the original lines +/- 0.10".

We were able to produce the finished model for less than $1000.00 and the client was extremely happy.

Rhino is the only modeler I've seen that offers all the tools needed to model complete boats. Most offer this or that whiz-bang feature, but none offers everything.

Rhino's major shortcoming is the inability to shell a hull. You composite hull designers would like to be able to specify hull thickness, which varies over the length and depth of the hull. Maybe in R4???

[cestes]

Damn, how does that keep happening???