Studio tools or Rhino

I'm at university at the moment studying industrial design and hope to enter into the boat design area. My university has offered me two CAD packages, Maya Studio Tools and Rhino, one of which i can take a module in. The problem is i have no idea which one would aide me best in the boat design industy. if anyone could help me in my choice this would be most apreciated.

thanks

james

 

Learn Rhino there quite a few module released specifically for yacht design details on rhino website and in the forum. Rhino isn't the best 3D package in my opion but because its relatively cheap its got a lot of users in the marine industry. It got most of the UK designers use it create there pretty pictures. If you see more advanced rendering then its probably done on another program. And it improving a lot with each release!

 

Studio Tools seems to be way better tool and software, it is used by some Yacht design firms to create nice shapes and forms, I will take Studio Tools but I will keep a copy of Rhino and learn it because is more used, and more marine oriented, yes Studio Tools are great and excellent surfaces but you still need to expand your plates, and check some preliminary stability, which rhino can do with the right plug ins, so take Studio Tools just for the learning, but use rhino, for me work it out really good because to start I was able to buy rhino with out much problem own a license and be able to do some work on my own, I can't see myself paying so much money for Studio tools just to "see" what happens, besides there is other software's that you may need so all that adds, paying 650 for rhino instead of thousands for Studio Tools and Maya no way and at the end Rhino works just as well the studio tools for what I do and I have been able to do some nice hulls and surfaces, remember Maya is one package and Studio tools is another, and the cost is really high, but at the end learn studio tools but learn rhino too is easy and it won't be hard to use it once you learn Studio Tools or Viceversa.

Good luck

 

I would personally go for a dedicated boat design package. They typically offer much better shape control than the typical general purpose CAD/3D-modeling packages.

 

Thanks very much for the rapid and very usefull replies, i think im going to try and tackle both and see what happens.

 

Claes is right, do not forget that either one rhino or studio tools are the best or easiest solution when fairing of a hull, yes, you can fair and draw almost any hull in this software's but there is no comparison to software specialized for such task, as claes mentioned the tools in this specialized software's are way better.

 

One thing to keep in mind:

Most design offices who use a high-end dedicated marine design package also have Rhino. Why?

Because Rhino fills in the gaps left by the modelers in most of the dedicated packages. The most common statement made by these offices when asked why they have Rhino is that "We can only go so far with xxx software, then we have to export the model to Rhino to do the finishing touches.

With Rhino, Any hull can be modeled from start to finish. With plugins, you can approach the functionality you need without the high price of the high-end dedicated software.

If you are a design office doing multiple high-dollar designs, then the high-enders can be justified. If not then Rhino with plugins will do the trick very nicely.

 

I agree that most hull fairing programs lack the ability to model the entire model.

I disagree when you say that Rhino is as good as the real hull fairing programs. It's not really better than many other 3D modeling and CAD programs in shape control.

I prefer to use a real CAD program instead to carry on from the hull fairing program, which allows both the additional 3D modeling and to complete the working drawings.

 

'real cad program?'

Geeze Claes,

If you're gonna go and imply that Rhino isn't a 'real cad program' you're gonna have to back it up more than just saying that other programs provide similar levels of shape control...

I think you'll find that there are a lot of rhino users lurking about these parts and they use it for a reason, not just because it's reasonably priced and can work with a number of different file formats, but also because it helps them produce what they want easily...

Don' mean to jump on you... I like to use maxsurf for the initial hullform but I've found rhino hard to beat for the rest of the concept design... Can you enlighten me?

Cheers,

Dave

 

Not intending to kick on Cleas but he does have a bit of his own agenda as he makes a Cad prgrm himself so he is "SLIGHTLY" biased.

Thou I honestly must say that the Demo of his program was not bad at all, very useful in fact but the renderer in the demo sucked dunno if that's the only option though.

 

Claes:

Thanx for the reply.

You say, "I disagree when you say that Rhino is as good as the real hull fairing programs. It's not really better than many other 3D modeling and CAD programs in shape control."

Well, what I said was that Rhino was better than the modeling kernel in most, if not all "dedicated High-end" programs, meaning the likes of AutoShip, ShipCam, etc.

My post said nothing about CAD programs, which Rhino is not and does not pretend to be. It offers only the most basic of CAD functionality. Its strength is and always will be modeling surfaces of any imaginable shape. It does "solids", but not well. It does dimensioning and labeling, but not well.

Anyway, I stand by my original statement that the dedicated marine design high-end packages, while offering an extremely wide range of functionality, do not have the versatility built into Rhino. You will always find users of these programs reverting to Rhino to "finish up".