Surface modeller and hydrodynamics

Hi

I am looking for best surface modeller and hydrodynamics program for windows. Please post your favorite and most functional programs for boat design.

Thanks

Jaakko

 

Hi Jaakko,
I have found Rhino (by Robert Mcneal & Assoc) to be good surface modeller and it has RhinoMarine (by Proteus) as a plugin to do it's hydrostatics.
Not saying that they are the best.
They are just cost effecient & user friendly software with great support via their newsgroups.

Cheers,
Cian

 

Cian Groves? Now where have I heard that name? Been a while.

 

Try Autoship or MaxSurf (with plug-in such as HydroMax anf HullSpeed) they work nice.

 

Aye Autoship or Maxsurf are well known programs for our industry. My school at the moment uses Maya, 3dsmax, Solidworks and Rhino for surface modeling.

Good luck !

Chris

 

Rhino

I have been using rhino at a professional level for four years now and I am still delighted with it. With its advantageous price/power ratio Rhino is a revolution. It is easy to learn and use and there is nothing you can't model with it. The basic rhino package has the ability to perform some hydrostatic calculations but there are more advanced hydro/stability plug-ins available for Rhino. Personally I use Vacanti's Prolines to model my hulls and do hydro/stab. calculations. I then simply import the hulls in Rhino and complete the boat around it. Rhino is oriented toward yacht design from the start and is likely to become an industry standard. Although there are other excellent -and more expensive-surface modellers around, again you won't be short with Rhino.
Rhino’s strengths;
- Affordable
- Powerful
- Widespread
- Easy to use/learn
- Excellent migration capabilities
- Customizable; Dozens of plug-ins available
- Rhino is perpetually improving, evolving
- Expansive on-line help and forums

You can see dozens of Rhino models at www.Rhino3d.com

 

Jaakko

I went through this selection process for my company not long ago and I agree that Rhino is an exellent surface modeller and I highly recomend it. As to hydrodynamics packages I have had extensive experience with many and as mentioned the plugin for rhino are good but if you requrie a more professional package than you cannot go past Maxsurf. Autoship is good also but I believe that maxsurf package is more complete and more intuaitive.

Regards

Drew

 

I might be wrong, but I'm under the impression that maxsurf and autoship perform hydrostatic calculations... not hydrodynamic... For hydrodynamics CFD or potential flow codes are often employed...

 

Do surfaces in Rhino have a thickness? For example if you want to draw a rectangular plywood panel do you have to draw all 6 surfaces separately or can you draw one surface and extrude it in the thickness direction?

Karsten

 

Hello there!

Jaakko:

Look at the software section discussing the best CAD.
Ask companies in you region what they use.

Karsten:

Have Rhino a try! You can download a fully functional Rhino demo,
that saves only 25 times. Make a surface and try to extrude it.
Rhino is easy to learn!

Best regards,
Robbi

 

Hi Karsten,
For a flat shape such as a plywood sheet you can as you said "draw one surface and extrude it in the thickness direction" to the desired thickness. It will then be considered as a solid and you can calculate volume , area, CG etc and perform boolean operations from it. For compound shapes such as a round boat hull, you can offset- say the outer sheel- to the desired thickness . You then end-up with two surfaces . If you want a solid out of it you can build a surface along the edges ( sweep two rails ) and join the 3 surfaces.Some 3D CAD will do a solid right out of a compound surface. This is usually called " shelling". Rhino is considering adding that in future releases.

Luc

 

What commands, specifically, are you using for this? I've been playing with a hard chined hull model, and have the outside surfaces. I haven't found an automatic way of generating the inside surfaces offset by the hull thickness. I need the inside surfaces for placing bulkheads etc (plus want to be able to unroll the developed surfaces of the hull panels for CNC cutout).

Thanks
Phil

 

Hi Phil,
Select the surface to offset, then go to the "surface" command and choose "offset surface". Then type the distance you want the surface to be offsteted in the command line. Small arrows will appear on the surface(s) to be offseted. if you want to change the offset direction, type "Flip" in the command line.
You are talking about a chined hull so it is likely that this is a multi surfaces object. If so, explode the multi surface before trying to offset.

Hope this helps

Luc

 

Thanks Luc. I tried that method earlier but found I then had to deal with the overlaps of the interior panels as the outside surfaces are extruded inwards... tried splitting the surfaces along the intersections, but Rhino didn't always want to co-operate. I was hoping there was a way of shelling the whole polysurface (outside of hull) inwards... your comment "For compound shapes such as a round boat hull, you can offset- say the outer sheel- to the desired thickness . " made me think such an operation might exist.

The alternative is to calculate a complete new set of control points normal to the ones that defined the outside surfaces... but wanted to avoid that if possible (building the boat around the class rules, where half a dozen measurement stations are specified, with tolerances)