Freeship beginner and Cat Hull Issues

I could use some help on the Freeship software if at all possible. I am not a boat designer by any means and just have enough knowledge of this program to get out some rough forms. I would like to generate a very rough model of a 18 foot power catamaran, mainly just to set up some size parameters and basic visual reference points.

I plan on then sending this rough "sketch" to true boat designers so that they could refine it into an actual CAD design suitable for plug building. I dont have the know how to work out the hydrostatic designs of a hull. I just want to be able to give the designers a visual form of what I am looking for.

So far I can not figure out how to use Freeship to get a cat boat started. I can get mono hull versions to the point I would like, but can not figure out the basics behind getting a cat design started. I assume I will have to use the "mirror" function? I have tried this and it always seems to put the boat on conflicting halves. Even if I could get the mirror to work correctly, it would essentially just be two monohulls with no "tunnel" construction.

If anyone could point me in the right direction with this, I would appreciate it. Thanks for the great forum.

 

The Freeship manual describes how to do this. You mirror the hull as you have already done, then translate it horizontally to its final position. Now you have two cat hulls at the appropriate spacing. You can extrude the inboard gunwale horizontally, and set the resulting points to be on the centreline, to create the 'bridge' between the hulls.

 

Thanks a lot for the pointers, going to try and work this out.