Freeship and Delftship

Discussion in 'Software' started by terrnz, Mar 18, 2014.

  1. terrnz
    Joined: Mar 2014
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    terrnz Junior Member

    New to the forum though I have been following for some time. I am designing an 11.6 Mtr performance cruising sailboat with an emphasis on short handed sailing. I have built 2 boats previously an 11m and 12m but not my designs, though with a lot of input. They were good boats but reflected the designs wants in many areas rather than my own. So I have started thinking it might be better to do my own!

    I am going through the exercise, and many iterations, and have been using Freeship and lately Delftship.

    My questions are..

    .1) Anyone else doing some thing similar, could share ideas?

    2) Anyone else using Freeship or Delftship for sailboats who could give me some pointers in laymans language?

    I find the manuals, such as they are, full of programming language when I would prefer a step by step simple procedure for actual tasks such as inserting bulkheads.


    There are a lot of other issues such as the hydrostatics.

    Anyway I would be interested to hear.

    Cheers.
     
  2. Fanie
    Joined: Oct 2007
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    Fanie Fanie

    Who designed the other boats ?
     
  3. terrnz
    Joined: Mar 2014
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    terrnz Junior Member

    Bruce Farr and Gregg Elliott. Both great designers and both great boats and were existing designs. I now have my own very definite ideas and I would probably get a great boat now from either but I have a problem with the design fees they want these days. Both have gotten used to grand prix yachts with carbon everything with big budgets and I am going back to basics. My comments and wishes in no way are meant to disparage them.

    I am looking at an easily driven light hull, dry wt without sails of 3600Kg for a sailing wt light ship of 4000Kg, 11.6m LOA with a smallish rig. 9/10 no backstay, no overlappers. less lead, fewer sails smaller donkey (20Hp) and you end up with a boat that does not break the bank to run but still have fun.
     
  4. Ike
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    Ike Senior Member

    I have used Freeship and am now using Delftship. Delftship can be rather daunting and you are right, many of the tutorials leave out a lot of steps and are aimed at experienced users. I had many difficulties but most of them actually have easy solutions once you dig them out of the jargon.

    My method for inserting bulkheads is fairly simple but has a lot of steps to it.

    First you need to use the Extrude command in the Edge group. It only works on Boundary edges. What the Heck is that? Well, the centerline is a boundary edge. The sheer line is a boundary edge. Usually any edge that is on the outside of your design is a boundary edge, but the only way to find out is to try it.

    You select an edge by clicking on it. The Extrude button will light up (it, like most of the buttons are greyed out when not activated.) When you click on the extrude button a dialogue box will pop up asking for a distance in the x, y or z plane (x is longitudinal, Y is transverse and Z is vertical distance above the baseline) . I usually use the centerline.

    It really doesn't matter whether the extrusion is horizontal or vertical, although it is convenient if you have a vertical edge to extrude off of because then you don't have to rotate it.

    Put a value in the transverse, but make it Negative, such as -5.25, in whatever units you are using. Click OK, a Panel will appear on the side away from the half of the design you are working on.

    Next, you need to disconnect the panel from the centerline. click on a forward or aft edge (it should turn from red to yellow). Then find the Edge Split button in the Edge Group. Click on it. The line you selected should now have a point in the middle of the edge. Move that point (I assume you know how to move points) close to the centerline. Do the same thing on the opposite edge.

    Then highlight both new points at the same time. Click on one then hold down shift and click on the other. The New Edge button in the Edge group should now be lighted. Click on it. The two points should now be connected by a grey line. You need to change this grey line to an edge.

    By the way, always make sure that nothing is highlighted that you don't want to change. Just right click and a menu will pop up. The first item is Deselect All. This is probably the most used command in Delftship.

    Making sure only the grey line between your two new points is highlighted, go to the edge group and select Set Crease. The line should turn red. You will now have a small segment between the panel and the centerline of your model. You need to delete this segment. That will disconnect the panel from the centerline and the model.

    Simply click a line segment between the panel and the centerline (making sure everything else is deselected) and press delete on the keyboard. The small segment will disappear and the panel will remain.

    Have you learned to use layers? You need to make the panel a seperate layer.
    First find the Layers Dialogue button in the layers group. Click on it and a window will open. It will show you all the layers for all the parts of your model. Create a new layer by clicking on the first button on the left. A line will appear that says Layer #xx. Click on that and give it a name such as Bulkhead one. Uncheck the box for hydrostatics (fifth column) Click ok at the top of the window.

    Go to the panel. Click on the grid inside the panel and it should turn yellow (again making sure nothing else is highlighted). Just below the Layer Dialogue button is a field that highlights the active layer. Click on it and it will show a list of layers. Find and select the new one you just created. Your panel is now on that layer. Now you can move and rotate your panel without affecting anything else in your model.

    Find the Tools on the Menu bar at the top. Open the tools menu. On the right is a section called Transform. Go to the top and make sure the layer you named is shown. Click on move or rotate. I usually rotate first. Click on Rotate. A box will open listing all the layers, at the same time every point on your model will light up. Go down the list, Uncheck everything except the layer for the panel. Click OK. A box will pop up asking for degrees to rotate the panel. If it is horizontal put 90 deg in the transverse field. It is asking what axis you want to rotate the panel about. When you click OK the panel may disappear out of your view. I haven't figured out how to prevent this yet. It is there. Just zoom out and you will find it.

    Now that it is vertical you need to move it. I usually move it only one direction at a time but you can move it in all three directions at once if you want. You go through the same process as for rotating but click on the move button. Enter how far you want to move it. These are not the coordinates of the location. They are the distances away from the location. So if you want to move it to a location 5 feet forward put in 5, or if it is 5 feet aft put in -5. After inputting the distances, hit OK and it will jump to the location you specified. You can then move it in little jumps until it is in exactly the right spot, or just move points around to get it in the right spot.

    Once you have it in the right place long, trans, and vert, you can then shape it to the shape of the hull by moving points, adding points, etc.

    Sorry this is so long. But it is a tedious process, and I have not really found a simpler way.

    Several rules I follow. Put each part on it's own layer. I usually have a hull layer, a transom layer, and if it's a hard chine boat, a bottom layer and so on. In the long run it makes it far easier to work on each part of the boat.

    Make each layer a different color.

    When working on one part of the boat turn off layers you are not working on or don't need to position or shape what you are working on.

    Use Deselect All a lot.

    Save your work frequently. I also save it to a new file usually named, mod 1, mod 2 and so on at each stage. That way if I screw up I can start over with the previous mod and not lose all my work.

    Look here for some of my work. The first page was modeled in Delft but then exported to a drawing program, but the other three are all in Delft. http://newboatbuilders.com/pages/design.html
     
    Last edited: Mar 21, 2014
  5. ancient kayaker
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    ancient kayaker aka Terry Haines

    I haven't used DelftShip for a while, I decided to go with FreeShip. The reasons for the decision back then - some of which may have changed - are:

    FreeShip is free!
    The free version of DelftShip lacked plank developments which FreeShip has
    DelftShip would load FreeShip files but FreeShip could not load DelftShip files which lead to my having to recreate files
    The commercial Delftship was based on FreeShip, which was community-developed. Since there was very little to choose between them I settled on FreeShip. However the professional version of DelftShip should be an improvement on FreeShip IF you need the additional features. I don't since I am merely a dabbler . . .

    The manuals are a bit stuffy but I donwloaded a tutorial that provided a step-by-step introduction to delftShip which I found OK for FreeShip. Google FreeShip tutorial or Delftship tutorial - there are several to choose from.
     
    Last edited: Mar 22, 2014
  6. terrnz
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    terrnz Junior Member

    It seems to me delft and freeship are pretty much the same. Delft has some nice screen features but most of the useful bits are greyed out. I think Freeship's resistance calcs are much more useful.

    Many thanks to Ike, I have been doing something similar about halfway to your solution. I will try your way. I do the same as you and keep a base model and create a new work file. I learnt that one the hard way, Finally worked out layers by myself, trial and error with the accent on error.

    How about adding buts like keels etc without destroying the hydrostatics .
     
  7. lewisboats
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    lewisboats Obsessed Member

    Keels are generally added by moving the centerline over, then extruding the keel shape back to the center.
     
  8. Ike
    Joined: Apr 2006
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    Ike Senior Member

    Freeship is very good, and much easier to figure out than Delftship. It is very true that some of the most valuable functions are not available on the free version of delftship. For instance, you can unfold a developeable hull, but you can't print or save it.

    But I didn't figure this all out by myself. On Yahoo Groups there is a Group for Freeship at https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Freeship_HTandT_Group/info. There are a lot of tutorials you can download as a PDF. Most of these are pretty good. There is one on keels and fins. However, now that I have learned how to use the fin and keel wizard I prefer to use it. But, for simple skegs the extrusion method is easier. The secret to not messing up the hydrostatics is to use layers, and deselect the hydrostatics function when you create a new layer. The program automatically turns the hydrostatic function on when you create a layer so you have to turn it off. Also, if you have any leak points below the water line hydrostatics don't work. The software assumes the boat has sunk (LOL)

    The one thing I would love to see in both of these programs is a copy/paste function. It would be invaluable for creating bulkheads and interiors. Once you have created a bulkhead you could just copy and paste a new one in a different location.

    PS: Delftship has a forum on their website, but their site has been down for several days now. I have asked questions there and they usually have good solutions. But delftship occassionally does funny stuff. I have still not determined why at one stage in a design the hydrostatics worked fine, but on the next step the LCF and KM suddenly became zero. Everything else stayed the same. I even Undid all the previous steps and they stayed zero. I had to load the previous saved version and start again. This time everything worked fine. I guess it's a bug of some sort. No one on their forum seems to know the answer either.
     
    Last edited: Mar 21, 2014
  9. lewisboats
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    lewisboats Obsessed Member

    There is... it only takes a few of extra steps. Ensure your BH is on a separate layer, deselect all other layers, turn on faces and highlight the whole BH. Export it as a .part, then import it backinto the model. It will import directly overlaying the original BH so deselect that so you can move your new BH.part over a bit. Re-select your other layers and then position the new BH where you want it and shape it to fit. You also have the .part for future models. Somewhere in the archives is a Thread I started with several different .parts... I wanted to build up a library of them but nobody else wanted to play.
     
  10. lewisboats
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    lewisboats Obsessed Member

    The method I described above is primarily for full length keels, rather than fin keels or other NACA foils.
     
  11. Ike
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    Ike Senior Member

    1 person likes this.
  12. lewisboats
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    lewisboats Obsessed Member

    Thanks...
     
  13. terrnz
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    terrnz Junior Member

    I have had the same experience. Layers work sometimes to avoid the hydrostatic problems for me. What I want to do, though, is include keels rudders, masts, and boxes representing things like motors, tanks etc. in different layers. This should give me an updated real vertical Metacentre, COG, etc for use in my Righting moment calculations. I have made an excel spread sheet with all the bits but a real time update as you modify would , I think be useful. It is just getting it to work!

    Dumb question, maybe, but is there a way to create a bulkhead using the plane.
    insertion?

    Next question:

    Has any one done inclined waterlines on Freeship? It seems from the manual Delftship has this function in their professional version. Anyone used it?
    I may have to go against my Scottish blood and part with the Euros!

    Very useful tips so far from the forum members, thanks to all.


    I am not inherently lazy or stingy, just economical of effort and careful.
     
  14. ancient kayaker
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    ancient kayaker aka Terry Haines

    By "inclined waterlines " - do you mean Cross Curves in the Calculations menu? (Gives righting moment vs heel aat various displacements)

    If you mean diagonals it's under the Visibility menu but it's grayed out in the versions I have.
     

  15. terrnz
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    terrnz Junior Member

    I want to check on the symmetry of inclined waterlines at 20, 25, 30 degrees of heel. Assymetric waterlines on beamy, eg IOR shape hulls cause a lot of weather helm. Ok if you are racing round the buoys windward/leeward, as it forces the helmsman to keep hunting up to windward, (Farr designs are typical examples), however it is hell on a reach. one hand on the vang, one on the traveler, one on the mainsheet. Solo sailing you run out of hands!
     
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