Yacht interior layout

[Polarity]

Did not understand a word of the surface to solid bit except .dfx!-I have a long way to go..
However I totally agree with Jeff's comments about the interface - at the same time I can see that a LOT of hard work and some amazing brains have gone into the programs' functionality. - I was also very suprised that there were no keyboard shortcuts - never use them myself but every thing else is stuffed with them.

I would like to say a big thanks to Steve and his crew for 3 things:

1) No "please fill in this 400 question form before we let you download the demo" (3d-no-privacy policy-Max are you reading this..)

2)A number of saves, not a time limited demo

3)Being up-front about the pricing (Maxsurf are you reading this...)

Thanks!

Paul

[Polarity]

PS I still have not crashed it which is more than can be said for Word, Excel, IE, Windows, Eudora.....

Sure it wont be long though

[Gades]

I think that Mechanical Desktop is aimed more at geometrical/numerical surfaces, and Maxsurf is aimed at irregular shapes (like a hull). With MD you control the actual points of the model, you don't with Maxsurf (as you know). You cannot design a hull with MD, and you won't have all the calculations from Maxsurf (like hydrostatics, VPP, etc).

I'd say that Maxsurf is aimed at the "Naval Architect" and MD at the "Designer".

With Maxsurf you'll get a model with a proper Cp, LCB, etc..., and with MD you'll add the best possible elements like deck-hardware, ergonomic deck, interiors, etc... and you can also get render images.

I'm sorry not to try a better comparison, but as I have the newest version of Maxsurf and a pretty old one of MD, it wouldn't be accurate at all.



BTW, what you say about the doorway, I think it's quite easy to do with surfaces, even if you have to creat more surfaces. Definetly, you won't want to do it with solids.

[Gades]

Paul, so you really are having some fun with CAD

I think that after Jannuary, if I have the time I'll give it a try as well, that's software sounds quite interesting.

Now I'm trying to get a free copy of Mechanical Desktop, because I'm back with studies and have to finish my final project dissertation. But, I can't find the an e-mail address at the Autodesk site. Any ideas?

[Jeff]

BTW, what you say about the doorway, I think it's quite easy to do with surfaces, even if you have to creat more surfaces. Definetly, you won't want to do it with solids.

I've been using AutoCad since 1996 so I've had a good solid modeler but a so-so surface modeler, so forgive me for being dense. But in the example picture below, using Mechanical Desktop is there a way you can create this bulkhead without manually creating each of the red surfaces? (for the edges of the cutouts - I want the bulkhead to have 3/4" to 1" of thickness, for example.) Each time you make a change, can you auto-update the second surface and the edges of the cuts?

As far as the comparison, I haven't really spent that much time with the demo for MaxSurf so I wasn't sure if it had primitive shapes built in or what the advantages might be of Mechanical Desktop since you're using surfaces in both programs. It's been a year since I've seen Maxsurf, so my memory was a little foggy as to what it was weak on.

[Gades]

Jeff: I can't think of a way how you could draw that without doing the red surfaces manually. At least not with surfaces. If you'd use solids, as soon as you modify anything the whole part is upgraded automatically (being parametric).

With surfaces:

let's say you have the two bulkheads. Then you draw the profile of the wholes. You extrude this profile and trim it with the first bulkhead. Now you have a hole in the first bulkhead and a surface that starts in this hole and goes all the way through the second bulkhead. Now you trim the second bulkhead, as you did with the first one. So at the end you have three surfaces: two bulkheads and the contour of the whole. So much trimming might sounds a bit too much, but trimming is really straight forward. If I have some time later, I'll try to make a Power Point presentation of this operation.


It could always be that the new versions have changed and it's easier, I don't know yet.

[Jeff]

OK, so Mechanical Desktop has a good quick trim function. That would make the big difference. I finally understand

In ProSurf I should be able to follow your "with surfaces" exactly but with the extra steps of turning SSI on for the three surfaces, maybe attaching SSI to Surface (?), converting the SSI to curves, and then trimming each side. No big deal, but still a fair number of steps. Now that you've listed the steps, the double/triple trim makes perfect sense.

For some reason I was stuck thinking in AutoCad terms where you can't trim a surface with a surface and I was thinking of drawing all those rectangles and radius patches manually... (I'm still used to AutoCad solids where you can only 'subtract' and not 'trim' and were 'extrude' is a solids term - I guess I'm just getting started thinking in terms of a real surface modeler.) Thanks for jogging me out of that line of thinking where I was stuck.

[Gades]

I just did this bulkhead in a minute. It's the hull of the boat I posted before. And I added a bulkhead randomly (so don't think if it's the proper place or not )

In this image, I show you how to get to the trim-surface function:

[Gades]

Once you select that option, the computer ask you to select two surfaces. And then a small window will pop up, so that you can select if you want both surfaces to be trimmed, or just the first one with the second one, or the second one with the first one ...

Here you have that window:

[Jeff]

PS I still have not crashed it which is more than can be said for Word, Excel, IE, Windows, Eudora.....

ProSurf does seem VERY stable. I've been trying my best to trip up the demo just to make sure it is rock solid, and I've been very impressed. In all my stress-tests, the only error I managed to cause was when inserting a knuckle (It was actually in ProBasic and I got the message that I had run out of surfaces, but I don't think that's what caused it.) I didn't see it right away, but then when I opened the model after exporting it a few times I noticed that somehow the rows had been offset along the knuckle, so while it should have been a-a, b-b, c-c it was now a-b, b-c, c-d along the joint. It might very well have been something I did myself as I am just learning the program. In any event, it was fairly easy to just recreate and rebond the surface to fix the problem.

I have picked up the habit using other modeling programs though of always saving the design (under sequential names) at major key steps (when a major irreversible change is made) and I think it's still a good idea with any program no matter how stable it is. I sometimes end up with 30-40 revisions of a model, and though I've rarely needed to backtrack, once or twice it has come in handy to have an old stage of the model, and I feel much better knowing I have the backups.

[Steve Hollister]

Hi Jeff,

Do you want some hints on how to crash ProSurf 3? Oops, forget I said that. When I was in school I first heard the story of how if you give a six-pack of beer to a student, he will get any program to crash.

Whenever I use my own program I do what you do, which is to "Save As" the progress of the boat after key steps; boata.srf, boatb.srf, etc. I often end up with 20 or 30 variations. Even if the program doesn't crash and even with a big undo stack, it still is a good idea.

So far, I haven't had any "crash" problems (program locks up with no solution) with the program. There have been some errors that have been corrected (see the web site for a list). For those with the program, you can download the latest version at any time.

For errors, one tip is to use the "Undo" command right after any odd behavior (error or otherwise), since the program will probably undo the problem. Then Save As the model to a new filename and continue. If you don't do the "undo" command, then you might compound the problem and not be able to get a good save. [Generally, we software developers do not like talking about these things!]

[Polarity]

Well... since you brought it up... I did manage to wipe out 3/4hrs "work" with prosurf basic - I use the same trick of sequential named saves - but I'm being mean with my demo saves!

I had the hull - 2 surfaces the main hull and a bonded knuckle/sheer. I hid the main hull then did a "draw all surfaces" and it drew an extra row from the sheer to the xz centerline - whilst trying to undo, redraw, delete and generally get rid of it the program GPF'd (crashed). - That still makes it 100 times more stable than anything by Mi****ft. In fact I was lulled into a sense of false security because it had been so stable for hours on end - good job I'm only doing this for fun!

Can I get my student status now?

Simple Q. How do I draw the crown of a deck with a surface - ie I dont want to draw just one side and have it make the other side the same as the crown has a specific radius..

[Jeff]

If you right click on the surface (or other entity) you can uncheck the box for "symmetric", but I'm not sure how to best specify an exact radius for the deck (or how to do it numerically). I'm also curious if you would have to do it without it being symmetric - seems like you could do it with arcs which still have the same radius and only have to draw half).

Edit - I didn't think about the difficulty of bonding a deck set to not automatically generate the symmetric half to a hull which is set to autogenerate the other half...

[Polarity]

Hi Jeff

I figured it out - turn off symetric, make the deck with an odd number of rows (bottom view) with the center row at y=0
Use "Surf-Mould Row/Col-radius/arc" to camber the cols, delete the port half rows and turn symetric back on. - Not very elegant but it does the job - and you dont have to worry about the bonding bit.

Cheers

Paul

[Polarity]

Got a bit carrried away learning all these new and exiting products and languages. Anyway this is what I came up with in Rhino (the horizontal lines are because its the eval version of the renderer). Strangely I went back over this thread and understood a heck of a lot more than I did 2 months ago!

Paul