This is interesting.
http://www.3dcadworld.com/russian-cad/I had NO idea TurboCAD was of Russian progeny. Never saw it in the marketing material back in 92-ish when I first had exposure to CAD software.
PTC? Russian origin. WOW.
I wish someone would secure permission to fork Shark for shipbuilding the way other apps are aping AutoCAD. If I won a Powerball, I'd be really tempted to license Shark, tear it down, and rebuild it for ship design, with a database in it, and completely redoing how CE, SM, and Inspector work. I have ideas that I have put to paper just from all the stress I'm going through designing a naval combatant in Shark (moved it out of VCP7 and into Shark LT v8 about 2 years ago). Lately, I've been forcing myself to pretend I'm going to rebuild Shark, and have been making notes. Everything I'm notating is about making MY tasks easier to design the ship.
Along with winning a powerball, I'd find a decent way to incorporate Freeship 3.4x/Hydronship (Victor Timoshenko's additions to Freeship, not the pre-Victor version of Freeship) with "ZLC's Shark" so that ship design hydros would be real-time visible as the hull is shaped, and allow for comparing 3 base models at concept stage, before getting too far ahead.
But, licensing permission to ape a GUI, and licensing a 3D graphics engine/kernel, and making it platform agnostic (win is not the ONLY game in town, nor are desktops/laptops) would cost multiple millions.
Any CAD I use would need to look a lot LESS like ACAD and still be powerful. Sometimes, less is better. But, reportedly, nanoCAD is better than AutoCAD. If nanoCAD looked more like Shark, I'd be confused. Even FormZ is very VERY attractive, but I'm hesitant to embark in a huge new learning curve.
I just hope that the 64-bit kernels Shark is licensing will actually BUILD my solids that I currently am having problems with. It's gotten to the point that I'm using offset surfaces to visually have inboard and outboard shell plating representation. This business about inconsistent face edge blah blah is frustrating. Just automatically tweek the base geometry to enable a plane to automatically cut/trim and rebuild or replace the face without too much user involvement required.
It would be nice if Tim had compelling reasons to go after funding for a Shark for Ship Designers. My trials and tribulations, and my drawings could be test cases for prototyping something. Something like designing real ships and designing 3D printer-destined ships for clubs mass-producing competitive models. One day, some entrprising designers will eventually make ship modeling companies undergo what news papers, movies, and music houses did: a massive shake-up transformation. But, 3D printers may be the death knell of some model kit companies unless they retain the throne on detail and reasonable pricing.
But, too late now. I'm planning to drag myself back to Korea soon. As just one member on a team, there is likely no way I will win a case for using Shark. No Korean, no database underneath, and a few quirks here and there will make someone get all stabby on me, hahaha. But, in my hobby, I can still delight in using Shark.
