Crazy question??

I have been kicking around the idea of doing my own boat design.

I know the learning curve will be long and I also know good software will cost about $15,000 by the time I have everything I need.

Anyway my plan is for about an 85' trawler in steel.

I do own and know how to use auto cad but to do this project I would need other programs like maxsurf, shipconstructor and about 100 others that all seem to do the same thing.

So my question is what software do I really need to get this project started?

Before anyone ask. This boat would be used by my wife and myself during our retirement and that is about 10 years away so we have time. LOL

Also we would have a real boat designer check everything out before we decide the boat is good to make an around to world trip.

Thanks for your help.

 

Design and production:

freeship- Free, Rhino3D, CMS intellicad (mid version).

Design:

RhinoMarine the stability module (is a plug in for rhino)

Books:
Propeller handbook (Dave Gerr)
The Elements of Boat Strength (Dave Gerr)
The nature of boats (Dave Gerr)
How to design a boat (john teale)

under 1800 us, and you are set

Cheers

 

Freeship/Delftship - free version is excellent for sketching out ideas, testing various hullforms, etc. Pro version is kind of expensive for what it is but if you pony up the cash it can do a lot of the normally tedious stability and tankage calcs.
Rhino 3D (now on version 4) - Not expensive, amazingly good. I highly recommend it.
Rhinomarine plug-in has a lot of devoted users, I haven't got around to trying it yet.
AutoCAD is great for the 2D drawings and detailing once you have the hull model done.
Add some good books, plus a fair bit of time to learn how it all works, mess around with smaller stuff, figure out exactly what it is you want, etc.

 

And don't forget paper and pencil

 

WOW,,

Thanks guys for all your input..

If you seen all my pencil and paper drawings you would die. I have been drawing this boat for about 2 years now. No kidding I bet I have 500 drawings of it.

Now I need to get it into the computer and see if it will even float up-right.

Glad I posted here first. I was just abut ready to pony up for MaxSurf to get started.

What do you guys use in-place of programs like hullspeed and seakeeper?

With a trawler adding to much HP will burn to much fuel and drive up cost so I was a little worried going in blind without those programs. Plus trawlers roll a lot anyway and my guess was seakeeper would at least let me play with things to get a good middle ground between good ride and economy.

Again THANKS!!

 

It's great that you have made all those hand drawings.
I like Rhino, RhinoMarine, and even AutoCAD, but it's with the pencil you can make the best looking boat.

I also think you should try to do rude estimates of displacement and weights by hand.

 

Ahh, good old pencil and paper.... sometimes the old ways are the best. No matter what I'm designing I still tend to start that way before going digital, nothing like the feel of an actual drafting pencil to get the creative juices flowing...

These didn't exist at all 20, 30, 200 years ago. What did designers use then? Intuition, hand calculations, comparison to similar boats, experience.
In place of Hullspeed you can use Michlet, similar mathematical basis but without the fancy GUI (or the price tag). Seakeeping codes of any sort are just black magic anyway, right? Well, OK there's a lot of math and research behind them, but in the end conventional calculations are probably just as accurate on average.

 

Hullspeed - SeaPower (sea-power.net)
Maxsurf - delftship (http://www.delftship.net/)
Seakeeper - PDStrip (http://www.veelo.net/bastiaan/pages/projects/open-source/pdstrip.php) not as practical to use as seakeeper, but free

crazy question??.....of course it is, but man all the power to you!
it will be cool to see the evolution of your project

cheers

 

Yes I will become an active member of this forum as this project progresses.

I will try to scan into my computer the first drawing (on the cleshay bar napkin) and some of my newer drawings to start with.

Then as I learn the software I can post some computer generated ones.

All the way to pictures of the completed boat.

Thanks again for y0ur advice,, it looks like I have lots of homework to do.