Beginner wanting to transition away from pencil designs

Michael Piezga wrote 'So many ugly computer drawn boats in the world...shipyards full.'

Too true. Regrettably not enough visual education or sympathy with the object and not just confined to boats, unfortunately. Design is thinking made flesh, that's what makes it interesting, and it should also help raise our spirits not depress them.

 

Once again - how is it the computers fault ?

At least with computers, the odds are that they wont fall apart or sink from bad hydrodynamic design these days, even if they are ugly.

Imagine trying to do the calculations on the big boats they build these days without computers.

 

The computer allows you to draw and build complex, sculpted, over stylized shapes.

These shapes dont compliment form and function and rapidly go out of fashion . in 5 years the boat looks hopelessly dated, clumsy to operate, drops in value and turns into a waterfront eyesore

 

That description fits a lot of power boats designed in the 1950's and early 1960's without a computer in sight. They are rarely seen today since they rapidly fell out of fashion.

 

Make a design so good it lasts for years has nothing to do with computers.
Moreover, the current trend in a world ruled by consumerism, is to get the products to become obsolete as quickly as possible, based on having new models almost every year.

 

yes, before there were computers they could never design a good boat. it was not until computers that we could ever rely on a boat, a bridge, a building or anything larger than a little red wagon. I think not!

Whether designed by manual calculations and paper and pencil, or by using computers, it still takes careful design and knowledgeable designers.

I would hazard to guess that we have likely gotten just as many bad designs, if not more (because the number of inexperienced designers that think all they need is the correct software), than there was before computers.

A computer is only a tool. In the right hands, i.e. a skilled designer, it will speed up the design process and allow optimizing of the design without as much tedious and repetitious number crunching. But it is not a substitute for knowledge and experience. In the wrong hands it will create colossal blunders, no matter how much money is spent on it. We have recent examples in the news right now.

The computer does not do anything we can not do with pencil and paper, it just does it faster (consider the computer can only count to from "0" to "1").

 

I agree totally with you, Petros.
Some people think that having a computer, some software, and have drawn something like a boat, are designers of boats and, to make matters worse, are allowed to give advice.

 

What - like this one ?

 

Ok, I know when I am being set up here, but just for the sake of a good argument ......

Exactly - before the computer, you could never design a 'good' boat, you could merely copy previous ones with slight variations. I remember discussion with boat designers in my youth (1965) who showed me how they calculated the Centre of Effort of a 40 ft yacht hull, by balancing a cardboard silhouette of the design on a straight edge. As far as load calculations went "I copied the same planking and framing as the ..... yacht of similar size which has been sailing for 20 years"

Likewise, the exaggeration of "a little red wagon" can be replaced with something quite a bit larger - but essentially the very things that allow modern civilization to exist - eg supertankers, huge jets, massive civil engineering projects ( tunnels, bridges, embankments ) could not be done without the computer.



Your last paragraph is the epitome of inaccuracy ( you should have used a computer ).

"does it faster" should be replaced with "accomplish in hours what would take several human lifetimes manually, present data in radically informative layouts" ( have you ever tried manually keeping a Ghant chart up to date ?? )

"can only count to from "0" to "1" besides being amazingly wrong, should be replaced with "can represent values that were inconceivable to work with only 50 years ago, using a base numerical system of -1 and 0"


I don't really understand this propensity to blame computers for human decisions, or relegate them to over complicated, irrelevant machines - when they are patently not.

Do you expect me to spend days doing what I can accomplish in 30 seconds ? Would that make me a real designer, or just an ignorant Luddite ?

 

one of the largest aircraft flying, the Boeing 747 was designed in the '60s. the United states sent man to the moon in only eight years from starting in the '60s. One of the fastest planes ever built, the SR-71, first flew in 1962 designed from technology learned from its predecessor the XB-70 Valkiry, largely from late '50s technology. The world boat speed record was set in 1978 and still held by a boat built in the pilots backyard out of plywood.

None of these things were done with the benefit of modern high speed computers. Most of the design work was done on slide rules. They had skilled and experienced designers on all, and there was no canned software to help them.

 

Your examples don't prove the redundancy of computers at all, but each of these projects took 4 or 5 times as long as their much improved successors.

The last one is also totally non-typical.

"Water Speed record ... pilots backyard out of plywood." is a very disparaging commentary on the apex of years of research.

"Professor Tom Fink, who had worked with Donald Campbell 20 years
earlier, provided technical advice on wind-tunnel tests and constant design modifications. " http://www.anmm.gov.au/webdata/resources/pdfs/vessels/Spirit_of_Australia.pdf

I saw this one on TV
"the night before the attempt, Warby cut six centimetres off the rudder to reduce drag"

Ken was doing the calculations on a Texas Instrument Pocket calculator in front of the safety inspectors. How did he get the measurement of 6 inches ? From his computer ! He didn't take 1 inch off, try it, then take another 1/2" off, then try it etc. as you would have to do by trial and error.

As far as the SR-1 being designed by slide rule - where one earth did you get that from ? The plane itself was computerised - for its engine controls and its astro-inertial navigation system (ANS)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird

All the moon missions relied heavily on computers for controls and design, and had their own computers - albeit small ones.

The US airforce has been using commercially available computers since 1952 , tides have been calculated by 'Tide Calculation machines' since 1880, - so you need to go back a long time before for 'slide-rule' only projects to appear.

By the way, the slide rule, initially invented in 1630 - is a computer !

 

So are my fingers and they work in base 10....

PDW

 

but nothing near as sophisticated as modern computers and software were used on any of those projects. And I happened to know, that while they had early primitive computers on those projects, the vast majority of the design work was done with slide rules. I own the book about the development of the Blackbird written by Kelly Johnson's right hand man, Ben Rich, who took over the skunk works when Johnson retired.

An abacus is a computer too, but that is not what you mean when you say computer.

 

Only if you use your toes as a secondary stack

 

if you knew that, why the heck did you say they only used slide rules ? How do you justify calling their computers primitive ? They are no different in function to today';s computers, just with less secondary storage and processing power.

The fact is, that without computers, the SR7 - like most sophisticated planes would never have got into the air without computer power.

Also, don't forget, the SR7 development was cancelled or postponed several times due to funding problems.

Computers have reduced the cost of major projects so dramatically over the years, that it would be impossible to finance all large projects if you quoted on the basis of slide rule or abacus computation.

There is no way anyone can sensibly object to someone acquiring the skills for CAD or similar tools on the basis that 'real men (designers) carve boats out of logs', or cardboard patterns."