Superstructures in Rhino

There's been a million and one threads on modelling hulls in Rhino, but I'd be interested to hear how others go about modelling the superstructure. Obviously it varies boat to boat and from person to person, but there are bound to be tricks that those of us who find CAD the most tiresome aspect of yacht design haven't picked up on - like me!

 

For cabin sides its as easy as extruding with a tapered angle for tumble and the trimming out windows and offsetting surfaces for design features, rather straight forward.

For organic features I tend to use networksrf more than anything else. Either way you do it rhino make it extremely easy to develop stuff from sketches to the finished tooled part.


--John

 

I tend to draw planar views of the bit i want to model
eg profile and plan views of a windscreen

then I use 'curve from two views' to generate rails for a two rail sweep. the process tends to be iterative in that the generated rail usually has to many points to be of much use. between the refit and rebuild curve tools and a few quick and dirty trial sweeps i can usually get close to the surface i want.
Also the 'blend' tools get a good workout especially between an exterior longitudinal and transverse member.

I also use planar drawings projected onto surfaces.
Using the planar drawings as a starting point also means that you develope a (rough) 2d drawing at the same time or on the other hand you can import 2d drawigns to kick off with.

Rob

 

Will I can’t see where there is a difference between manipulating a surface of a hull and one for the super structure. I have always treated a 3D model as a little bit of drafting but a lot like building the real thing. Sometimes you have to build some scaffolding or station frames or the like (lines, points etc), to then put a surface on it, which you can change later, trimming or adding ,bending etc.

 

I prefer nudging control points to make 2D curves into 3D, first draw a side view of a curve, then in top view move the control points to make it look right. Then edgesurf, loft or whatever to make the surfaces.

 

Hmmm - interesting... there you go, see - 4 replies and 4 different ways of doing it!
To date, I've done it much like Rob, though I do tend to use extrusions a bit. One thing I haven't perfected yet is how to partly trim a solid offset surface. For instance, when doing cabin windows as in the example below.
The cabin side must be partly trimmed (in red) to allow for the thinner glazing.
Now some (me previously) don't go to this level of detail in 3D - just do the outside surfaces then export and do it all in 2D, but of course the more you can do in 3D, the less likely you are to introduce errors....

 

Will as I always say, with CAD there’s no right or wrong way, just your way. If you are dealing with solids then boolean operations are the way to go in your example. With surfaces I trim away the bits I don’t want then profile the rest.