Best Free or Low Cost Marine Design Software? (2011)

Que, Speaking of poor American English, some years ago I was in conversation with some Koreans and one of them apologized for his poor American English saying: "My American mouth is Broken!"
I couldn't help but laugh.

I doubt if there's anybody around these parts that could help me with Argentine.

But I think the local College may have somebody who can explain some of the rudiments that I dont seem to be able to grasp.

 

Free!Ship,
and it's open source

 

OK, I got Freeship now.
In a few days maybe I'll know if I can use this one.

 

It seems there are some things you can do in Freeship Plus that the free version of Delftship does not do, such as saving developed plates.

Are there things that the free version of Delftship does that Freeship or Freeship Plus do not do?

Also, an old question, but I am wondering if there is any updated information: Is there a solution for transferring designs between Delftship and Freeship Plus. I have read about some makeshift methods, but when I tried them they either did not work at all or did not work very well.

Thanks.

 

Delftship has a good tutorial.

 

Anything else?

It seems to me that one of the (possibly few) advantages of the free version of Delftship over Freeship or Freeship+ (Freeship plus) is that there is an upgrade path of Delftship to the Pro version.

Of course, one of the main reasons for upgrading to the Pro version of Delftship would be to restore features that were taken out of Freeship when it was changed to Delftship.

 

freeship, but cant find the website right now

 

How about adding a paragraph and link to "Free!Ship plus" in the software directory? There is a paragraph and a link to the old Free!Ship, but that project has been discontinued by the original developer, and the project has more or less been taken up by another developer in the form of Free!Ship plus. Therefore, a link to this fork of the project would be useful.

Delftship is of course another fork of Free!Ship. It is nice to play with, but the free version of Delftship is is not fully functional. For example, you can't save developed plates, and Delftship is crippled in a few other key ways, making it non-functional if you actually wanted to use it to design and build a boat.

By the way, here is a link to the Free!Ship plus website.

http://www.hydronship.net/index.php?lang=en

 

Good suggestion Alan - added.

 

Thanks.

 

From my point of view, there is no such a thing as "best software". I think it's just a matter of choice. Everybody would call the programs, which they have experience with, as the best because they get what they want from that program.

 

I agree with this.

The biggest advantage of Freeship, imho, are the power prediction methods added by VictorT. They cover a wide range of ship types and speed ranges, while Delftship has only two resistance predictions methods available - and neither of them for planing or semi-planing hulls (for example). Considering the importance of planing hulls and hard-chined construction for small boat industry and for DIY boatbuilders, I believe this is a big flaw for a software like Delftship (which is otherwise an excellent product).

A flaw which both of them share is the impossibility to create frames, bulkheads and other constructive details in a simple way. It can be done artificialy, but is very time-consuming. A function which would allow a creation of the offset lines of stations or control lines would be extremely useful in that sense, but neither Delftship nor Freeship has it (as far as I know).

Cheers!

 

I agree with this. I am trying to create frames for a trial hull design I am working on using Free!Ship Plus, and even with aid of another software package to do some of the calculations it is difficult and very time-consuming.

 

you can get frame dimensions with Freeships . Just go to the set up for stations and empty it , now insert stations where your frames are. Then under file , export offsets.
these will be to the outside of the boat and you will have to deduct hull thickness . You could construct an interior from the inside of the hull and label this as another layer . Then insert frame locations. It can be a pain if you do not start out with the idea of doing this .

Having thought about it some more, just insert frames into hull and and remove hull thickness with the move function. Although the accuracy would not be good enough for some projects.

 

As long as your structural elements coincide with stations, waterlines, buttocks or diagonals, you can export .dxf lines and use them in AutoCAD directly. This work perfectly with free version.
As to thickness question, it is very easy to decide from the start that Delftship model will be the inner surface of shell and work accordingly; for metal boats it works perfectly; for wooden or sandwich ones, some tricks could be necessary when calculating hydrostatics.