Scull Design and Solidworks?

Hello,

This is my first post.

I am a very proficient user of solidworks, but my every day job has never called for me to use any sort of Lofting so that is where my question lies. I would like to use solidworks to possibly design a Single racing scull (non competitive) that I will make out of either mahogony or Ceder strips. Cedar stripping would be easier since I would not need to figure out panel lofts, but would rather glue them to a lightweight skeleton.

My question is are there hull design add ons for Solidworks? I have SW2006 here at work and will be getting SW2007 soon. I also have Rhino, but I never took the time to learn it. I would like to be able to loft a solid model of the hull and then run some fluid dynamics on the hull. This is new design territory for me, but welcome a chalenge and would like to use my skills for my hobby rather then work all the time. Any idea, where I could find cheap or freeware fluid dynamics software that can take a solid model or exported surface model?

Anyone on this board have any Scull design experience?

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,

Marc Webster

 

You can use Freeship to model the hull, and use freeship to export to mitchlet which is a free CFD for marine use, and a scull should be no problem for michlet to analyze, also besides using freeship for hull deisgn and surface fairing and export to michlet you can save as iges from michlet and open it on solidworks to finish the 3D model.

Rhino can be another way to go but for what you are looking for (model the scull) i'll stick to Freeship+Michlet+solidworks.

There is a plug in or add on to solidworks for marine design is called surfaceworks and they have other marine related software from the same company.

i'll stay with freeship and michlet.

Solidworks can do the hull, but is not marine design oriented.

cheers

 

Hi Thrmaln,
For SW there is a full package for fluid dynamics - COSMOS Flow.
I have desing a powerboat from alluminum using SW2005, analysese witn SOSMOS Flow show that there is a good agreetment with other special programs for prediction hull resistance and velocity.
Dimitar

 

Thrmaln,

I have drawn a couple of very crude v shaped hulls using SW2005 and have tried to use Floworks without much luck, I drew the underside of the hulls by lofting along the length. I can email the files to you if you would like. If you can get comparative results with your designs I would be interested in how to set up the boundary conditions.

Good luck

James

 

I second CGN's suggestion. Doing your rough sketches in Freeship is very quick and intuitive, and it's very easy to get a beautiful, fair hull surface this way. Going back and forth with Michlet is a very quick and effective way to improve the boat's efficiency. Once you're satisfied, IGES it out to whatever program you want to do the details in.

 

Here are some files