SolidWorks 2007

wow!

For the first time, SolidWorks is taking aim at hull design as a major application. There are some really incredible tools for manipulating and fairing surfaces. To show off this capability, SolidWorks has put together demonstrations and training exercises specifically for designing boat hulls.

As soon as I'm able to, I will share some of this with you.

These surfacing tools are on par (and in some cases exceed) those capabilities in programs like Rhino. This is not a special add on and is available in the base package of SolidWorks.

 

Please let us know
But what's the price of SW compared to Rhino?
And do you have to work with planes, sketches and parameters all the time?
That's the beauty of Rhino, you work so fast because every vertex or group of vertices can be modified directly, moved, "nudged", rotated, scaled, projected and so on.

 

As mentioned earlier, SW is considerably more expensive than Rhino, however, in the same proportion, it does much more than Rhino. You can really only compare Rhino to SolidWorks in the context of its surfacing capabilities. Beyond that, SolidWorks takes care of all the other stuff you would normally use 5 other pieces of software. For example, 2D plan generation is automatic as is B.O.M., mass properties, etc. On top of that, all of these operations are relational. I've discussed this at length in other posts.

As for for your other questions, you are not required to work with planes, sketches and 'parameters' all the time (although it would be foolish not to use parametrics). Just like in Rhino, you can build and modify your surfaces in the context of other surfaces or sketches or features. The beauty is that you can do this not only to a surface model but a SOLID model. Working in solids cuts down a tremendous amout of the tedious construction, trimming, etc. that you have to do in a surface modeller.

 

Yes, we have been here before
I don''t know SW, but I often choose Rhino over Inventor.
Hull design for example is much easier in Rhino than in Inventor.
Do you seriously mean that you would prefer to design a hull in SW?

 

I have Pro Engineer as well, all parametric and far more powerful than solidworks but I still prefer Rhino. Just find it so inuitive for surface work, it also interfaces so well to the other software we use .

It will be interesting to see what capabilities they give the new solidworks.

Cheers

 

Any info on the demonstrations? I use SW2007 at work, as well as Rhino. I also know a little ProE, but havnt used it in a year. Where? when are the demonstrations? I woudl love to see what it can do.

 

Sonadora

I have just spent a few hours playing with Solidworks 2007 and I am afraid that you appear to have been taken in by the marketing hype.

Rhinoceros remains a much better surface package for the boat desiger. Shame it would have been nice. But considering that there isn't even a hydrostatics plugin and the "superior" surface tools are really those based around generating solids it is a hopeless boast.

Solidworks is a very good solids modeller and I was impressed by its automated solids generation procedures and Its seamless FEA (if you buy that bit) but my money remains with McNeel for hull design.

 

Mike, nice to hear that
As I'm also selling Alibre and Rhino in Norway I am far from neutral, but I think Alibre's approach with import of rhino files as surface features is a better solution than trying to make their own surface tools.

 

Raggi

I think you get better value for stand alone products eg Rhino Alibre and Say Strand/Strause FEA than you do for an all in one package for example Rhino beats solidworks for surfaces and Strand/Straus is a more powerful FEA package than the embedded Cosmosworks . However Solidworks too can open Rhino documents directly (Plugin) so it offers some attraction for the engineering side of the vessel design and drawing generation.

I've never seen Alibre in action but the reviews are A1.

cheers
Mike

 

While we're at it, have you tried Algor?
How does that compare to Strand?

 

MikeJohns,

I would say that I haven't fallen for any marketing hype as I am intimately involved with the technical implications of SolidWorks.

Like any tool, it really is only as good as the person using it. If you are telling me that you 'played around' with SolidWorks and that was enought to convince you that it wasn't useable, then you aren't familiar with the Software's capabilities.

As for hydrostatics, just like Rhino, add-on packages for SolidWorks take care of that. And, actually, a lot of the factors involved in hydrostatics are built into the model since we are talking about solids. Mass, density, CG, CB, etc. are inherent in the model. Someone savvy with the API could easily create routines to develop the hydrostatics without using an add-in.

In addition, with the ability to import native Rhino files and upgrade your models to take advantage of solids, associativity, and parametrics, SolidWorks makes a very practical solution for the big picture.

If you notice my thread has not bashed Rhino at all. However, Rhino is just one piece of the puzzle. In fact, more important than surfacing is the documentation of the design including 2-D drawings, BOM, PDM/ERP/MRP, etc. This is where SolidWorks excels. The process of using Rhino-to-AutoCAD is an antiquated process and one that is due for an overhaul. While SolidWorks is a good approach to solve this problem, there are other, more powerful applications which do this. The difference is the dollars involved. These high-end systems can easily top $100,000. Not practical for someone designing a handful of small boats in a year. At around $4000, SolidWorks fills a niche between the high end and the 'low' end.

In fact, one well-known manufacturer has proven this out. Check out Palmer Johnson's website. They initially installed 12 seats of SolidWorks for proof of concept. This went so well that they recently installed another 15 seats.

 

Sonadora

I worked through the tutorials, read the documentation and created a surface based hull then a solids based hull, then I made some machine parts and ran Cosmosworks, then imported some transverse keel frames and analysed those as well.

The solids generation was brilliant, Cosmosworks was seamlessly integrated and fast. BUT the surface tools are not as good as Rhino's ! what more can I say ? You pay for a very good very capable solids package that has some surface tools.

Ultimately it always sounds defensive to say that a negative assessment is due to naivety, CAD is an engineer’s bread and drink these days, we would move instantly to a better more intuitive platform and that is the reason we were evaluating this package.

After your exciting announcement at the start of this thread I was dissapointed that the claims didn't match up to the features.

If you truly know solidworks to be a better tool for surfaces perhaps you would like to enlighten me as to why this is so, I cannot see it yet.

Some examples would be good

Finally if solidworks was really targeting boat designers do you really think hydrostatics would be left to us to program in? and where are all these addins? a link to a dwnload would be nice.
So far the whole targetting boat designers line seems very creative.

I will be happy to stand corrected.
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Raggi

We were sent Algor to evaluate a year and a half back, so I guess it's moved on from there. I think it was slow on our systems and lacking some elements (like pre tensioned cables) then but I may be wrong, I do remember it crashing my system several times doing an analysis of a large 10 tonne canal gate. The support contact we had was not an engineer and was confused easily.

Ideally you want bricks, plates, beams and cables. Then non-linear and a feature rich results package. I also want them to run on a laptop and am very happy with wire-frame and a less glitzy interface. Some of the packages are massive users of hard disk space for the same features and appear to be compiled windows style...lots of code adding little functionality .

Strand/strause is a very tightly compiled feature rich application we've found a few bugs and complex large model sometimes need re-generating before they solve.

 

Thanks Mike.
Sonadora, maybe it's you who should learn more Rhino and more hull design
Just a few examples,
curvature analysis of surfaces and curves updated dynamically while you move control points accurately,
use all editing commands on points, move, rote, project etc,
How do you in SolidWorks change a hull so the Cp increase from 0.52 to 0.53?

Regarding API and add ons,
Rhino costs 900USD or so
RhinoMarine with dynamic sectioning and very useful hydrostatics costs 500USD?
How much programming will you do for 500 dollars? And that is after you have spent 5000 on sw?

 

I'm going to quote myself here:

"If you notice my thread has not bashed Rhino at all. However, Rhino is just one piece of the puzzle. In fact, more important than surfacing is the documentation of the design including 2-D drawings, BOM, PDM/ERP/MRP, etc. This is where SolidWorks excels. The process of using Rhino-to-AutoCAD is an antiquated process and one that is due for an overhaul. While SolidWorks is a good approach to solve this problem, there are other, more powerful applications which do this. The difference is the dollars involved. These high-end systems can easily top $100,000. Not practical for someone designing a handful of small boats in a year. At around $4000, SolidWorks fills a niche between the high end and the 'low' end."

Again, the surfacing isn't all there is. Does Rhino produce Bill of Material? Can you roll up costs on all aspects of the design (including paint)? Can you model in factors such as partially filled water tanks?

Also, I will give the nod to Rhino as a surfacing tool - for now. Solidworks has acknowledged this as well by providing a direct import into SolidWorks for Rhino files. That is not to say, however, that the surfacing within SolidWorks is not useable (or even less featured for hull design). As for parametrically making a change to the Cp, for example, it can be done. Is it built in? No. At least not yet. However, it can be built in the context of the design intent. This would make it so that a change in the Cp will effect the ENTIRE design. Say, for example, you've got your hull modeled up and you change the Cp. In Rhino, is there a way to tell how this will effect the 3 burner stove in the galley? Will it tell you that you will now need a 2 burner stove and adjust the entire bill of material automatically including any 2d drawings, sections, and details associated with this?

So to sum up (and I'll leave it at this), comparing SolidWorks to Rhino is missing the bigger picture. Until one has extensive experience with a solution (myself with Rhino, MikeJohns with SolidWorks), a fair assessment is not possible. Like you, MikeJohns, I compared some simple operations in SolidWorks (Boundary Surface) to lofting in Rhino and felt that Boundary Surface was a much more intuitive (easier) command for me than trying to figure out lofting in Rhino. The easiest part of this in SolidWorks was how quickly I can establish sketches to generate the Boundary Surfaces. And, since these sketches are parametric, that makes the Boundary Surface parametric. But again, that is due to thousands of hours of experience on my part in SolidWorks and virtually no experience with Rhino.

A perfect example to the systems approach is demonstrated by a company called Westport Marine. Go here and download the video:

http://sail2live.com/relay/

Cheers,

Rick

 

So basically ..............it is possible to design a hull in Solidworks and that in the future some nice tools may be written …like a hydrostatics package, however it does not “ target “ hull design at all. Other packages such as Pro engineer do have significant plugins, but Solidworks is on the same level as Autodesk Inventor, or Solid edge...so far.

The video you posted is about shipbuilding and the advantages of 3D CAD, note the designer would have used Solid works 2005 at the latest and he would most certainly (or I’ll eat my hat) have designed the hull and most of the internals in a specific ship design and analysis package and imported it into solidworks later.

If you want the full works i.e. bill of materials and full parametrics then you are far better going to a specific boat/ship design package.

If the hull design plugins ever eventuate for Solidworks what will they cost? Already for the money for Solidworks basic we can have a very feature rich and specific hull design suite based around Rhino. Rhino is targeted at hull design, is definitely faster (and more intuitive) to learn and has a large number of supporting plug-ins. It is also affordable for small boat designers and well supported .

The problem pushing Parametric design is that the design spiral involves specific design and detailed spreadsheets (and consequently bills of material) long before we get down to the final nitty gritty of hull shape. Hull form is then based around a number of factors to suit the operational parameters of the vessel. These should be decided on for a larger vessel long before you start creating the CAD hull model. At present you would have to export your SW model to another package that you purchased to do a free to trim stability analysis. So no one would buy Solidworks to design the hull.

Once defined re-design is a major process on a larger vessel and is not as simple as having a parametric relational capability, also the additional time taken to specify all the relational information and materials can add up significantly and are of dubious benefit on smaller vessel design if you are doing your job properly.

You must also consider what the builder is capable of using. Most smaller yards have no 3d CAD ability whatsoever and simply want 2d drawings, offsets and maybe NC cutting info.