Carlson Hull Designer Alternatives?

After years away, I want to design some small boats.

I LOVED the free "Hull Designer" from Carlson Design. It was just right for my purposes: designing small stich-and-glue ply boats. I loved how you could print patterns for layout on plywood. Or, as I often did, print on cardstock, cut and tape to make models.

However, I find it hard to use now. Probably because it has not been updated in years.
Can't blame Carlson-- he did a great service to making available, and there's no money in it, so why would he do the PITA work of updating it?

So... Anyone aware of:
a) Guides or workarounds to make it easier to use?
b) Good alternative programs?
- Does at least what Hull Designer does
- Free or low cost for an amateur home designer
- Minimal learning curve

Any advice much appreciated!

Ted

PS- Maybe I just need a 2014 computer

 

If you find that difficult to use, i dont know of any new program that is any more basic. If only for small craft.....

Bearboat Software

 

I have not found an active link for "hullform", that was pretty basic but worked fine.

 

Thank you!

 

You can test my Gene-Hull free applications developed within the frame of Open office, here is the one for sailing dinghy, the others are mentioned in the post text here below . Just to note that these applications cannot generate multi-chine hulls.
Gene-Hull Dinghy 3.1 and its post application VPP in connection https://www.boatdesign.net/threads/gene-hull-dinghy-3-1-and-its-post-application-vpp-in-connection.68654/#post-955449

 

I really like this software too, despite many more advanced options I come back to it when I want to play with an idea. Just so straightforward and tangible. I have gotten it to run pretty well on Windows 11, even got the table of offsets window back, by playing with the compatibility settings.

That said, I too would like a more modern interface and a few more options... but not much more than that. I've also found (only a few) errors, mostly related to the way it calculates displacement for odd shapes.

I keep playing with the idea of trying to re-write it - I haven't done an application before but have been learning various pieces of the puzzle for other purposes. Do you suppose there would be wider interest?

 

Actually looking back I think the main thing that allowed it to work on Windows 10/11 was to copy the three .OCX files from the HUL folder to the C:\Windows\SysWOW64 folder: MSCOMCTL.OCX, DBGRID32.OCX, and Msflxgrd.ocx .

 

People have to start somewhere, Freeship with its gazzilion buttons is off-putting from the get go. The real question is, why these simple programmes are no longer availiable, is it just software compatibility? I did run my old Plyboats 2.0 in a virtual windows.