Hull design software

Is there any free downloadable hull design software that is any good for drawing powerboat hulls?

 

There are two pretty decent freeware/shareware programs that you can try.

Carlson's Hulls and Freeship

http://www.carlsondesign.com/

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Science-CAD/Freeship.shtml

Hulls is the easiest to get to know and produce satisfactory results. Freeship is much more time consuming, but has a truly fantastic Hydrostatic Analysis package integrated. Both have the capacity to produce really nicely drawn hull panel sections for plywood construction and can be off-loaded to a printer, or even a CNC router for cutting.

For both packages, you will need to know what it is you are looking to do to produce the boat you desire. There are no easy solutions to coming to a really good powerboat hull design without lots of research, study and reading. Oh, did I say that you should be looking at hundreds of hull types and asking around as to their various performance characteristics before you do this.

This is an adventure, my man.... enjoy every minute of the journey and you could, potentially, end-up with one really fun boat for your efforts.

Find a boat that has the handling and general size that you seek in your finished design and try to emulate the shapes, the curves and the volumes. That might get you in the ballpark if you are disciplined in your compilation of the stats.

 

looking at the other boats out there is half the fun!! I've just finished my first prototype about to fit an engine and test it I'll post some pics shortly

 

Alibi;
You can also try Maxsurf academic ,and Rhino3d,Rhino Marine for the evaluation period;

 

Jeez what a dork I am. I just tried to download the Freeship in your link and it kept leading me back to "Download now"! I never got the download to start.
If the free download program is too complex for me, the Software is just gonna be too difficult. I gave up.

I guess I'll do my sketching on napkins and pencil.

 

Try freeship.org
There should be no problem.

 

download freeship 3.0+ from the following link
http://www.MegaShare.com/529313

 

Or try DelftShip free www.delftship.net ----->Download----> Delftship---->Delftship Free and while your at the download section download the manual and the Linesplan Tutorial, the tut is good practise.

 

I was helped out quite a bit with Delftship.
I have the tutorial and am slowly working my way through it. I'm on lesson two now.
That's an impressive program. The Tutorial could use some editing, but its very good as it is, as far as a tutorial goes. I'm learning, and thats a great reference.

I think my Learning curve is very short though. The little boy inside me wants to go off and play as soon as we get started with a lesson.

 

Thudpucker,
the most important bit of advice I can give you regardless of what software you use is to SAVE OFTEN if you get to a point in your model SAVE IT then give your model a new name (just a 1, 2, 3 after each one is fine) before to continue. If you stuff up you can always go back and reload the previous model with out too much loss. At the end of your design session just pick 2 or 3 or 4 of what ever stages that you consider import to you and delete the rest. Hope this is of some help, all the best.

 

Good advice ROO, thanks.
Your assuming I got as far as making something. Thanks again!

The "Bad little boy" is winning.

 

This is really, really, really good advice!!:!:

 

The emphisis on that 'Saving' comment speaks volumns about the painful experiences some of you guys have had.

The old philosipher said: "a lesson paid for with blood is worth twice a lesson given!"
Life teaches you things like that.
Learning new tricks is where I need the most help now!

 

Thud...

Saving regularly is important for any software you use for important work. Rhino allows you to set the period of time between auto saves, so that you always have a backup that is as fresh as the time period you designate, should the power go down, or whatever.

Delftship is just fine, of course. It's the same package as Freeship2.6 with some of the features turned off. I happen to like Freeship 2.6 myself as it is very stable and fits perfectly in my workflow. There have been some additions to Freeship beyond the 2.6 version by a kind fellow from Eastern Europe. I have not used that program yet, so I can not comment on its value.

The link I gave works just fine. Open the link, hover your cursor over the Download symbol and click. The next page will open showing you a cursor prompt saying External Mirror 1 in bold faced type.

A Mirror is a download site that will send you a ZIP file with the full software program packed for you to open in your machine. When you click on Mirror 1, you will get a download prompt box asking if you want to Open or Save the software. Hit Save and the download will start automatically.

The rest is pretty clear and you then have the program on your machine to use as you please.

 

You have to spend time on Delfship / freeship to know what it is you change on the hull. Do not assume once it looks right that it is, give yourself a bit of time to gain insight. The adjustments is done in 2d but in a 3d environment if that doesn't sounds too weird.

If you know what you're doing, very powerfull.