aerospace engineer looking for school

[sebastian]

I graduated with and aerospace engineering degree three years ago,and I have been working in the aircraft industry as a design engineer. Now I'm looking to go back to school for yacht design, and I wanted to know if there is a market for someone like me and what school would be best suited for someone with my background.

Thank you for any information

Sebastian

[waterman]

Sebastian
My brother is an aerospace engineer (embry-riddle), and I'm one year from graduating with a naval arch. degree. We have compared our courses catalogs and they are essentially the same ,course for course. You all ready posess a degree, if yoiu want to learn how to design boats, try getting a job with a naval arch firm. That way you get paid to learn in stead of the other way around. Or.... check out the landing school, they have a ten month intensive program. I think thier program will complement your aerospace degree and will give you the additional schooling that you feel you need.

Dude-

The landing school is for designers. Assuming your BS if from a good school, thers not too many choices for a MSE/MS.

[CDBarry]

Please note the relative paucity of jobs in yacht design. However, that said, you can probably just get a job with a decent real NA firm, especially one that does model tests, (in Newfoundland, maybe) or analytic work in structures or CFD or whatever your speciality is. You can just read a few texts to get caught up.

Alternatively, go to UNO, U Mich, or whatever for an MS.

[sebastian]

Thank you for the info, I guess I'm going to do YDS and read a few books. It does not seem that everybody is very optimistic about the job market, but I guess I feel luck that I can always fall back on my degree. I just want to move back to Florida, and it would be great if I could find a job designing sailboats or even motorboats.

Sebastian

[CDBarry]

YDS is a waste of time if you already have a degree in aero engineering.

[sebastian]

What do you mean by a waste of time, I think I can learn some of the standard practices and learn how to draft a boat by hand. I Use CATIA V5 at work and I would like to learn to do it by hand. And besides YDS is cheap, I know that the reviews for YDS are not great but I’m counting on my BS to get me a job, not the education from a non-accredited school.
If you recommend something else please le me know, right now I’m reading Principles of Yacht Design and I’m going to read book about boat structures after this one.

Sebastian

[CDBarry]

If you already are using CAD, already have access to a hull surface definition program, and already understand basic drafting, it will take you just trying it once to learn how to draw a set of lines by hand, after which you can never do it again and use CAD. CAD is one of the things that has actually made custom yacht design feasible, since it increases productivity of the designer and the builder (via CAM) assuming you know how to use it well, which you won't get from a yacht design program.

As to standard practices, there really aren't really any standard yacht design practices, and none that are any better than the ones you already have now - so you are already a better drafter than most yacht designers, if you are familiar with ANSI Y14 and so on. Many yacht drawings I see are pretty, but are really poor from a drafting point of view, so they are hard for the builder to work with, which is what really counts.

You should already know how to analyze structures better than most YDs, you should already know more about fluid mechanics than most YDs, you already know more about rudders, keels, etc (they are just wings, etc.) than most YDs.

All you have to do is find out a bit about wave drag, motions in waves (and no YD course can tell you about motions - they can't handle the math), and the particulars of small craft regs. Join ABYC and read the ABYC and ISO codes, and now that ISO is up and running, you have another advantage, because the YD schools can't teach enough to get a student through the ISO codes - (not enough math or structures - the YD courses don't cover basic structures, like section modulus, much less torsion).

You know more than the YD courses can teach you now, just read the professional level texts, join SNAME (buy the small craft CD), go to CSYS, get a subscription to Professional Boatbuilder, and go to IBEX and you can fill in the holes. Basically, just remember it's 1.9905 instead of 0.0238. There are plenty of other aeros who have made the switch before you.

[CDBarry]

WIth CATIA, you can probably get a boat design job right now, by the way. Go to the Professional Boatbuilder site, www.proboat.com, and look under employment.