Aluminum boats - how do they do it?

Guys, quick question for the experts. Some of these professionally made aluminum offshore boats blow me away.

New Build Metal Shark Fearless 32 -(More photos 22) - The Hull Truth - Boating and Fishing Forum http://www.thehulltruth.com/boating-forum/581662-new-build-metal-shark-fearless-32-more-photos-22-a.html

The fitup was pretty much perfect when they were tacking everything in place. Does the boat design software you all are using export files to a cnc table or something similar to do the cuts?

 

Current cutting machines can read .dxf, igs, ... format files, ie the formats generated by the most standard CAD programs. You can realize the nesting of the parts in sheets representing plates of the dimensions that you have, or you go to buy, and take the drawing file directly to the cutting machine. You can do it "by hand" although there is also software that, without doing an automatic nesting, greatly facilitate the work of the designer.
Attached is a sample of a dwg file prepared for the cutting machine.

 

The approach has been in use for a while. It was an option when I was involved in the design and build of a 100ft mussel farming barge in ~1999 in NZ.

 

Thanks for the replys. I had a feeling that was the case but you never know. I am sure there are a bunch of techniques used in design and fabrication that have been developed over time. And these techniques would be totally foreign to the casual observer.

 

Pretty much anything that comes in a sheet can be computer cut into panels. It's even possible to computer cut fish fillets into weight or size portions using machine vision (for eating - fish fillets would be a terrible choice of materials for boat fabrication).

 

What really stuck out to me with this thread was how quick the boat came together. In a couple months it was out the door.