What inspires you as boat designer?

No-no! Draw a big boat - it is so easy to draw it sleek an unusual; and let the rest of team of those stubborn and not creative engineers and NA's clear the mess That's how they teach 'marine design' in Universities now.

 

Alik - what's the cat in pic#10?? Length, width. weight, SA, etc - Looks nice & looks quick. Thanks for posting!! Caio, james

 

You mean this one?

15m in length, 8m wide, about 9000kg design lightship weight, 120m2 main + genoa.

 

Come on Alik, he'll spend a live time just doing the conduit runs . . .

 

Have you selected your school yet OceanLinerFan?

 

Agree, designing larger vessels requires a full blown design team, not to mention a budget, project schedule to name the primary elements. A high level concept vessel is feasible though.

As for what inspires me when designing:

-Primary design functions
-Art (including sexy curves of course)

Automotive design leads in the area of industrial design by far, and there's no doubt many boat designers borrow shapes that appeal to humans. Many of today's cars are a unification of sculpture and functional design. The best sexy interior components are often modeled by sculptors, then scanned (e.g. point cloud), then imported into a CAD system. Artists really go play a role in successful designs that appeal to people.

Today's boats are showing many new artistic features. We are seeing wooden components NC cut (versus hand built).

All in all boat design is a beautful art and this forum serves a fine purpose to share ideas and stories.

 

Any particular one in mind - perhaps the host of recent conference?

 

Par, you must be looking at the wrong naked women, because all the pics I've seen of your designs seem to be very beamy with large, heavy transoms and flat decks.

 

Yes, and this one too. As we discussed with You that day, David - starting from a dinghy would be better way.

After coming back from that even I drew this cartoon:

 

It would be nice if todays car designers took a few lessons from boats in terms of vision. Most of todays cars and trucks are nothing but claustrophobic eggs. The side windows and back windows are placed so high in the doors and rear shelf that it is literally impossible to see other than the narrow field of vision from the side mirrors. The bonnet (hood) slopes are so pronounced in the name of airstreaming you can not see the front of the vehicle at all. It has gotten so bad that the manufacturers now have to install sonar devices to guide you front and rear. This I might add, at an additional cost to the customer at purchase time and repairs to pass safety inspections. We recently shopped around for a new car. The vision was so bad in the new automobiles we had to resort in purchasing a two year old model so my wife could see the front of the vehicle. I recall during the 60 and 70's the buzz words in automotive ads was "reducing blind spots". Maybe it's time the NA's started designing automobiles because someone is surely dropping the ball out there and no doubt resulting in alot of people getting hurt in the process--

 

I lack the imagination because I am saddled by the owner's conflicting concept, Principles of Naval Architecture, Class Rules, Statutory rules, SOLAS, MARPOL, COLREG, and a host of other requirements that pulls me apart.

 

Yes and the employees of each are fighting like hell to promote their necessity to keep their jobs regardless of what it does to people like yourself. When they destroy an industry from overregulation they continue to exist just in case someone is foolish enough to have a go at it again--Been there-done that am in the middle of such right now, Just fkn insane.

 

Well, Well, boat design in Universities like all other Human endeavors consists of a system of indoctrination,obey the Rules,do not be different, do not think for yourself, and do not make waves that you can not climb over. And above all do not be practical and actually make something that does the job well.

 

That's precicely one one the reasons why I joined this forum, to learn from experts on another field which I admire.
But how easy it is to criticise... Talking about restricting regulations, do you know what it means to the design of a compact car to fit six or more airbags in its interior? or do you know how a bonnet section must be in order to fulfill all pedestrian protection regulation requirements in case of accident? These are just two of a long, long list of restrictions that make the job of a designer more difficult. But the fact is that the number of deaths in road accidents in Europe today is half of what it was ten years ago.
But you are right about the cars from the 70's, I really like those thin pillars.
And in the car industry the marketing guys finally understood that good design sells, and now the design depatments are filled with young artists employed to make their products more desirable, but according to marketing.
Sorry, I have to defend car designers, let's get back to boat talk.

 

We once designed a commercial ferryboat to ply a narrow river. The river was so narrow the boat could not even make a full turn without going into reverse and the air height was so restrictive because of low bridges built 50 years ago.

We designed the mast to carry the regulation lights (with enough height to pass the air height restriction) and gave it to the contractor. The smart *** contractor lengthened the mast saying COLREG regulation, the lights has to have a separation of 1 meter apart. We told them F**k you, do what you are told.

Next was the LSA, complying with the SOLAS reg. but ommiting the liferaft because the boat is a cat with multiple compartment vessel, built to (local)class, and it would take a mine to sink it. Further, owing to the narrow river, the boat can be beached to the banks within minutes if the situation warrants it. We could beach the boat even before we could release the rigid liferaft located on the roof.

The local reg allows the ommision but then a clause is inserted in the regulation "to the discreetion of the authority". The authority did not allow the ommision claiming their discreetion.

This time we could not say "F**k you. They are AUTHORITY.