Delftship: importing text files and or table of offsets

Anybody with any experience importing text files or table of offsets into delftship. The tutorials are somewhat vague. Thanks in advance.

 

I am presently trying to come to the same end myself. I will let you know if I make any progress. Be patient, I have a lot of things here to distract me from this, my preferred addiction right now, not limited to but certainly including an upcoming military deployment to Iraq. I printed of hard copies of the tutorials and instructions and put them in a binder, and found that to help in general, as I can study them away from the machine, or elserefer to them without interrupting the work at hand. I am making progress, but am still looking for the final all powerred moment of enlightenment. 73 KB1ONE

 

I have never been able to import offsets into DS, it would be great to know how. I have read tutorials and put files together with the format described but they never work.

 

I am also in Maine, trying to start a small home shop down here in Alfred. What I have done with DELFT is to get a Galway Hooker mostly lofted on it. I started with lines in a book from a hull built in the 1880's, moved the stem out a little, lowered the keel, really just playing around with the program. I started by drawing out the waterlines and a profile on AutoCAD, writing out the new offsets, then putting them into DELFT one point at a time. Slow, but it worked well enough. At 36.5' LOA, I don't know if it will get built, but it is an ambitious retirement home. It is named "El Hombre Feo" ["The Ugly Man"], after one of the best dogs I have ever known.

Presently, I am turning my attention towards "Illigitimus", a 19.5' gaff rigged pocket cruiser. All I have into it now is two nights of sleep lost to rolling it around in the back of my mind. I am really starting to like it. I will try this one as an imported text file, and let you know. If successful, maybe I could send you the file, then you could load it and see it for yourself. What say ye?

 

ancient kayaker -- I will be glad to share either success or not with you as well. All we can do is try and try again, until one or the other takes a dull axe to the whole works. Although these programs have their uses, they often make me long to return to the days when radios had tubes in them. Lofting on the floor still works, too!

 

Here are a couple to play with so you understand the input requirement for importing using the <surfaces> option.

One is 15m slender hull displacing only 1.4t. The units are metric. It has a beam of 850mm and draft of 285mm. The particular file is based on stations at 0.5m intervals so when you are asked it has 31 stations and 11 waterlines. The hull produced has a few bumps that you can fair out if you want. It should give you an idea of the data structure.

When you first import it the bodyplan will look odd because you need to set the working space to suit the hull. In this instance I would choose 15m for the length, 1m for the beam and set the draft at 285mm.

The second is a surfaces file I produce in Excel for prop blades. It is a 20 X 40 data set. This is the basis for milling prop blades.

Let me know how you go.

 

Thank you muchly! I have a feeling things here are about to get "much gooder"!

 

I see you simply wrote it out -- as a txt file and in the described format -- using windows notepad. This is exactly what I was going to do. I'll take your word for it working. My arm is injured right now, and I'm not really up to the typing. Thank you! You did make things here "much gooder"!

Thank you for bringing me one more step forward into the Modern Age. However, I am still going to stick to sending my morse code by hand, with a good old fashioned (and homemade) straight key...

 

Both the above files were generated by other software so not actually typed out but they could have been.

You can see how the data is structured and the way Delftship joins the dots to produce surfaces.

You can produce a coordinate table in a spreadsheet like Excel and then copy the table into a text file like Notepad for importing into Delftship.

 

Hi kb1one,
I have a table of offsets in a "standard format" heights widths from base center line base, etc.
Delft doesn't seem to work the same way.
I live in Lyman !
I don't know how far you have come along with the program, but I find it pretty much doesn't do anything I want it to. Very frustrating!
My greatest interest in the program is to check my manual hydrostatic calculations, ie. displacement, centers....which I haven't done yet
Let me know how you're doing.
Chandler

 

Post your table and I should be able to easily place in a usable format.

 

What I have been doing is starting with olde books and prints, or with offset tables, converting to inches for my antique Cad, and drawing out lines on the 2D side. This allows me to adjust lines to taste, just like tweaking a fairing batten. I then take these numbers, covert them in to xyz in feet for DELFT, and moving the default model points one at a time. It is tedious, but I have been happy with the end results. I am able to get displacement and resistance calculations etc. I am still fixing a few leak points, but the stem doesn't look like it found a "bad place to stop for lunch" anymore.

I have just started working with DELFT, got about a week with it now. Printing off all the instructions for reference has helped a lot, but that is just my caveman way of thinking. The hull I have been working with is a Galway Hooker, built in the 1880's. Originally it was 34'2" LOA, with a more or less vertical stem. I have lengthened it to 36'6" LOA, raking the top of the stem out 18", and deepening the keel just a tweak. All overall height/breadth measurements were adjusted to scale to keep the same beam/length ratio. I just like the tumblehome to the hull, and am committed to gaff rigs. Did I mention I have found this to be tedious?

It is bigger than I can currently build in the space I currently have, despite my ambition. I have the narrower half of a 30' x 30' cement floor. I am going to move towards a 19'er for now, a fresh start, and will try to get that onto DELFT with the offset table instead. First I have to pull those offsets out of my head, as they have not yet seen even the kitchen table.

Unfortunately, years past, I injured my shoulder and arm driving a flatbed truck, Over the Road. I was icing it heavily 6 times a day just to drive. Some how, it has gotten reinjured over this past month. Driving anything and sitting at computers are not things good right now. I am off to find the braces, the wraps and the heating pad. I will update as possible.

 

Chandler-- when you refer to "standard format", am I correct to assume you mean the 'proper' "foots-toes-eighths" way of figuring? KB1ONE

 

You really do not need to pull the offsets out of you head to start with. Just use the starter hull in Delftship. Select the length, beam, draft, number of vertical and horizontal points and you are under way. You then pull and pro in Delftship. The fewer points you have the faster it is to pull around. You can always add more points by splitting lines and surfaces as you go.

Give yourself about 100 hours at and then see what you think. If something isn't obvious then post a question here.

You did not say if you could import the files I posted.

 

Understood. . . I think. A spreadsheet format would be much easier to compile it all, "save" it as a text. Oddly, it really does make sense to me. Away with my reams of graph paper, gone are the days of pacing things out on tile floors. I am serious about the tube fired radios ( I used to cook my field rations on top of the amplifiers). I may be transistorized now, but I still do not use satellites or relays, it's just me and the same windswept peice of wire. Thank you for helping me upgrade my ways.