Freeship/Delftship Epiphany!

OK...I am sure there are others who have figured it out but after messing with umteen versions of FreeShip I have finally figured out how to get usable Stations from the offset file. Normally any hull that I have worked with has had rather nasty foot and decimal offsets for the station points and now I have figured out why. The aftmost point MUST be at X point zero! Once this is accomplished (by moving the entire hull) then go to stations and set your interval. Export your offset file and voila! Chined and multichined hulls will have knuckles which correspond to the chine intersections at that station. Round hulls will give a nice range of numbers to plot to provide your curve. To list a specific station position for say...a frame that doesn't fall on an even station line...insert that station point specifically and do another offset export. Find the station point and there you go. REMEMBER...This is to the outer skin of the boat so any frames must take into account the thickness of the skin when dimensioning. Angled bulkheads will require a range of inserted stations that cover the angle over the X dimension so as to get a decent curve to plot. Remember to proceed to the next chine up for each station in the span to get the correct angle or to take the next vertical intersection so as to get an angled plane on a round bilged hull.

Steve

 

nice post thanks

 

couldn't you export it into a 3d cad and slice and dice for dimensional info?

 

Sure...provided you know how to use a 3D CAD software, and have some handy.
Steve

 

A little bit of additional info. To get a Station 0 that starts where it is supposed to you need to manually add a station at .0001 and another .0001 aft of the forward most point of the hull for the last station. Regardless of whichever units the hull is in this is a minuscule amount and can be disregarded when lofting. Waterlines, Buttocks and Diagonals can all be exported as offsets in the same way although I would hesitate to do it all in one file...too much info to mess with at one time.

Steve