Best drafting software

I sell Rhino, Bricscad and Alibre,
Some of my customers use all of them, Rhino for hull modeling and unfolding, Alibre for some of the structure and general (more mechanical) 3D and quick illustrations (isometrics) , and Bricscad for 2D layouts and sending dxf/dwg to cnc cutters.

 

Many of the big 3D CAD players like Dassault systems (Solidworks) have made a dwg drafting package availbale for free eg:


http://www.3ds.com/products/draftsight/draftsight-overview/features/

 

I'm not neutral here, but I think it's better to pay a few hundred dollars or euros for Bricscad
For example you ave no Lisp or VBA in DraftSight(?).
A few macros can really speed up repetitive tasks.

 

Ragnor
I think they are working on autolisp anyway. Each Beta download will probably be a little different, keep watching.

But for many of us it's just a good package to get easier line types and dimensions onto drawings composed in Rhino.

McNeel could do a much better job there.

http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/showthread.php?49511-Free-DWG-editor-from-Dessault-Systemes

 

Yeah, I see, and as I said, remember I am a reseller also

Rhino can make quite good dxf and dwgs, but you have to open those file in an AutoCAD compatible program to check accuracy and cnc-ability. And then, since you need this other program, you can also do dimensioning, layouts, plotting etc there.

 

I've got a copy of Alibre but never used it much in anger, how does it do with marine work, is there a maxium sixe that it can comfortably handle? In my experience even a big workstation struggled with solidworks in 25m+ vessels.

 

Is there anyone who has used both Rhino and Maxsurf/Workshop? (recently) Can you comment on the strengths and weaknesses of each?

 

Rhino is a great surface generation package and a good boat design tool.

Workshop is very limited IMO and I often draw my structures in Rhino now just sectioning the hull shape. I don't even use Hydromax much now with the Rhinomarine addin (Orca is still not as good).

Rhino's main weakness is the plotting of structural details. Frankly it's poor since it's not WYSIWYG you have to plot preview the drawing to see what you really get. Line thicknesses are by layer and linetye scales are by text mod of an ini file. Dimensioning is poor so it's worth using another CADS package for technical drawings in the boat is being built from paper plans. If The yard has Rhino then you just send the drawings and there's no problems.

 

Thinking about taking an online course dealing with this (I have zero experience with CAD or boat design).

They have two different software packages (price shown) one if for the Rhino software - the other includes the "Flamingo/Penguin/Bongo" bundle.

Rhino version 4.0, Educational Pricing ($195 plus maximum US shipping) $215
Rhino/Flamingo/Penguin/Bongo bundle educational license (shipping at actual cost) $495

I don't have any clue what the Flamingo/Penguin/Bongo bundle is.

Is it worth the extra money?

 

Mike: RhinoMarine is no longer in development, Orca3d is the only Rhino plug-in alternative (that I know of).

Rig Pig: Flamingo/Penguin/Bongo are rendering, sketching, and animation plug-ins for Rhino go to the Rhino main page to learn about them: http://www.rhino3d.com/ (Links on the right). You may also want to check out V-Ray: http://www.rhino3d.com/resources/display.asp?language=&listing=870

 

I've used both for a fair while, I prefer to use Maxsurf to model and fair the hulls then Rhino to detail and develop them.

Maxsurf is great for fairing and starting a hull-form but really falls down for me when you try to trim surfaces or keep things flat/parallel. Rhino is very strong and has more tools than you'll ever typically need in project but it has a few annoying short-comings and it doesn't give you any function for constantly updating section lines which I use a lot in Maxsurf. Rhino is fairly bad at any intensive drafting or 2D work but then Maxsurf doesn't do that at all. I've not had chance/reason to use any of the Rhino plugins.

If I had to have one I'd go for Rhino but would rather have both. I've not used workshop but folk I know do and they're often complaining about it.

 

I think a few thousand parts is OK, but parts where one boundary is an imported surface (like a hull from Rhino) seems to be much heavier to handle than simple extrusions or lofts. On my laptop both Rhino and Alibre is getting slow sometimes with a 12m aluminum boat. Alibre (and SolidWorks) is better at drawing production than Rhino is, isometric workshop drawings for example.

 

Slow with a 12m boat doesn't sound too good. You might have a better idea of the limitations as a reseller, is that because Alibre handles curved surfaces particularly badly or is it just a typical limitation of working with larger sized files?

I might have to find a small project to do in Alibre and see how it goes, I've recommend it to a few people as a economical version of Solidworks and been pretty impressed with what it can do.

Yes, I've been back to using autocad recently to do some drawings and have been missing solidworks function for that.

 

Let' see how much the 2011 version is, released yesterday.
As a reseller I always try to be honest, and I thinks surface modelling is not the strongest part of Alibre. SW and maybe Inventor (now?) is better at that. BUT, importing rather "clean" surfaces from Rhino works OK, better than the often "dirty" IGES you get from several yacht design programs. So clean up, rebuild, smoothen, your surfaces in Rhino and then import to Alibre (or SW).

It's also about relationships between parts. Drawing a sketch for a frame or bulkhead and "extrude to the skin (hull)" is no problem in one part, but if you do this in many parts in an assembly it seems like the constraints between parts get time consuming to manage. If you simplify parts and make them "dead", not linked to the skin, "frosen", then everything speeds up, but you miss some of the points with "feature based parametric design"

 

Rig pig the software bundle you mentioned will give you a lot of flexibility to produce most things flamingo first pic, penguin second, and bongo is good for testing simple mechanical movement(wmv) and rendered fly a round’s


Acuttle have a look at post 8 here
http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/design-software/hull-fairing-rhino-34412.html#post394073
It may give you some functionality similar to maxsurf within rhino.