At Bakewell-White we always used Maxsurf for hull generation - which everybody seemed to be very happy with. Nice and easy to use - and didn't attempt to do too much !

I'd certainly never attempt a hull in Shark or VC .. it's just not the right tool

As for the rest of the boat/yacht/ship, Shark - or Concepts as it was then was good - but provided many challenges as the maturity of the drawing and surfacing elements particularly had some way to go

It'd be much easier now - that was five years or so ago

.. and once the fantasmaglorical V6 is out .. well workflow will be vastly improved and most of the annoying drawing side and surface side issues will be eliminated - forever .. rendering will be pucka ! .. and history will be solid as a rock !

Right Tim ?

.. Tim ?

Attached examples were built - inside and out - in Concepts (now Shark) .. and Rendered in SharkFX. However, the hulls were always built in Maxsurf

Short version:

I have a long road ahead toward becoming efficient to overcome my deficiencies...


Long version:

I got to play with a Rhino-based cross section of a container ship (the section being about 40' long, some 80' high and beam of about 100' i guess, with longitudinals, transverses, etc.) and it contained hundreds of layers. I cannot share it as it's company work, but while the .dxf output opened up in VC 6Pro in about 20 seconds and the numerous layers all were green, the Rhino extension of the file was taking so long i killed the process. VCP was iterating or doing something 1/2,000 on and on, but at like 15 or was it 149, i stopped it. That same file, opened natively in Rhino, however, opened up like lightening. The drafter who made the model is a wizard... a HELLUVA lot better than i am or should be.

I have no plans to use Sketch-up, but what i really would like -- which would help my use of VCP -- is the ability to say draw or extrude shapes/plate and then intersect one with another that may be smaller, say intersecting a girder and longitudinal or transverse stiffener and designating what solid is lopped off as soon as i click "accept location and trim assignment" or whatever terminology would be on a button.

Currently, (from Delftship) i have my stations (14 of them) and i also imported more (a total of like 562 port/562 stbd) and use the stations-feet as aids to draw ruled surfaces as the side shell. But, since i cannot join some surfaces (bad geometry/acis error/etc) i cannot always get a full-length section of surface with which to trim off excess plate the is outside the hull. (IIRC, in Sketchup if one overlaps two surfaces or solids they automagically dispose of the designated unwanted side... somebody refresh me on this...) I need to try grouping the surfaces to see if they'll act as one for purposes of trimming "green" or excess material outside the sideshell.

One thing i wish CAD programs would stop doing is imposing that surfaces need to be ONE and unless they are ONE they cannot collectively mathematically be used for cutting an intersecting solid. It's just way too much work/extra steps. Sort of like sawing: sometimes you use a table saw and guides, but other times just hacking of a perforated end is plenty good.

Right now, my inefficient initial step is to use a local area surface as the deck/platform, bounded by the two main transverse bulkheads, and the two sideshells. The surfaces are not contiguous, so ACIS error messages pop up and the contiguous deck surface cannot be trimmed in incremental steps. Maybe i'll have to just one by one draw or extrude deck from every so many stations-feet (and try to do it associatively? wait, no, if i turn off sideshell, then the deck would turn off, too...), since for *my* purposes, since this ship is not going to manufacture, i can live with millimeter gaps. However, my drafting supervisor admonishes me that even for my hobby, I should design it ACCURATELY...

I left in place the deck surface, starboard side shell, frames, stations, and the forward transverse bulkhead at frames 326 and 422.

If yo want to reproduce the transverse bulkheads the way i did:

-- ruled surface, at Fr/Station 326 and the line at the closest Station for port and for starboard.

-- ruled surface on the after line if the two, from port to starboard. the surface generates/sweeps up along the extents of the curves. Do the same for the forward line.

-- ruled surface on top of the two surfaces, using not lines, but the surface edge to create the top of the bulkhead

-- Stitch the 5 surfaces


if you want to, verify properties and assigned mild steel or something with a density of 516.6720 lbs/ft3 (or, if you prefer kg/m3, 8276.29151)


My dillemma is that the surfaces i create at the ft-stations/stations-feet curves don't always join. Even when they do, each successive join takes longer and longer to complete. Then, to mirror them to arrive at a contained structure takes more time.

Later, i'll want to sweep in some longitudinals and transverses, and it would be ideal if i use L stiffeners swept along a curve, maintaining an assigned height above the plate, and terminating just shy of the fore and aft bulkheads, with an angle cut to the ends.

But, for now, i need that deck plate to automagically follow the curve of the hull.

It would be stellar if VC could interpolate or interpret that the stations --if given surface-- would be the intersection point for the surfaces, and that a thickened plated that is thrown in the direction of up or of down should remain associated to the skin surface of the sideshell.

I gave in to joining each line segment, but that in this case is, well, over 60 segments just for port and starboard, and unfortunately, at the area of the sideshell and bulkhead, VC took to curving the lines rather than joining the up. That would create a surface larger than the intended containing boundaries. Fortunately, the TVBHD (transverse bulkheads) are surfaces and solids of easier construction, so only single lines resulted.

Now, some of you wondering why or advising me about tools to arrive at volumes... here's why i don't want to get into making and destroying solids: Later, that side shell will have at 3 or 4 foot intervals a number of sideshell stiffeners, or L-shaped girders running from top down. I may draw them continuous (not correct, nor ideal) or break them up every deck with 6 inches of spacing between deck and flange and overhead and flange. They are easy enough to create using the sweep tool. I'll make them solids. Those solids should be detectable inside the measured volume (fuel, potable water, fresh water, lube oil, whatever, doesn't matter what is in the tank. I'm not doing fuel density/cost/combustibility calcs, just volume for seawater, and later i can compensate for water type, temperature, etc, or leave that for naval buffs to drool over...) and then be subtracted from the measured volume.

So, it would be even stellarly fantastic if VC could detect the boundaries of dissimilar, intruding or penetrating objects and internally do the boundary cut and spare the user of drawing in inaccurate geometry and possibly forgetting to remove it from the model.

Of course, asking for this could help more than just me. Civil engineers might want to calculate water pressure/static head on a fuel or tank spill containment at a rail yard or airport or power station . If they draw in tank tower of say 30 feet and a given diameter, they might want to QUICKLY know the volume of that tank and how big a concentric barrier to design. Experts probably can do that on the back of an envelope... i wouldn't attempt it, hehehe. But, not having to draw a solid, not having to shell it, not having to balloon the model, not having to .... well, such things are wonderful to have as reality...

Anyway, you can see that the model is ~7.5MB (AND FAILS to upload...)... JUST for this much content...

DAMMIT, the 4.2MB file won't even upload... Have to settle on a jpg...