Checking what you have designed

My experience has been that 3D has a much steeper learning curve. Dream on.

Kelly

David,


thanks alot for your critics. talent is one the most you must have and can not be learn at school. What you can trained is to sharpen your talent. I have several friends NA who can not draw any single line. Most of them become project managers ;-) in shipbuilding or software development.

N. Herreshof was not a NA, he was a mechanical engineer.

You are right Kelly,


it is just a tool, but a very powerful tool if someone now how to use it until its limit

But the great thing of everythings is great ideas, there where everything starts...talk talk, thumbnails, 2D sketches and 3D models...

My customer is now interested to use 3D VR for construction


David, I always want to be a architect or a product designer, but circumstances decide different course..

I know some "special " ships for a SE Asia country that have 2.5 meter

I faced many psychological battle at my customers. Most of them come from the 2D (or 2 1/2 D) world...

Why not? I have no problem "to imagine" it ;-)...

I can analyse if my part collide with other objects. I can analyse the mass of every objects (try to calculate the mass or area in 2D and a calculator )

My personal opinion is, that there are people that are satisfied with what they have learned and feel comfortable with it (thats okay), and there are people who want to try something new in their life, so they move on That makes live richer


Jos

Greetings folks -
i am very much happy to work in 2-D.

interesting to read people discussing design like i understand it! KOGO is another profile at one time [i do not know who was the original]. there is much emphasis on rounded features for current builds [i think] and this may have caused a more rounded sheer appearance. [?] moreover, i do not blame the yards for the problem but overall styling [and sometimes it is attractive]. if a proper [elegant] sheer was drawn and followed, you could not see over the bow. the original KOGO, as i see it, had a whole upper deck. I like my deck lines to follow each other and if there is any allowance for window viewing, it is gradual. Here each deck line moves independently, and i don't understand why. there is absolutely no wind protection so the owner would be challenged to entertain outside while underway.

before moving back to Dallas, i saw in Savannah two Feadships out of the water, side-by-side: Rasselas I & Blue Moon I. nobody else but me saw the value of this, and they were not together the next day when i returned w/my camera. however, the hand-drawn lines of Rasselas v. the Blue Moon computer lines was remarkable, if not telling to somebody like me that values the art of beautiful yacht lines. this, of course, has nothing to do with Feadship, but points to the elegance the industry will miss if we think computer lines are/will be the only way to go.

i find, having drawn yachts for 30 years, that nothing replaces drawing them to scale by hand. you can make the same approach w/the spline, however you first have to have the sheer line in your head this is a basic - then work forward from it or make it all proportionately complement the sheer line. traditionally, the yacht is not suppose to have any straight lines.

so, back to the thread topic. i am going to share a couple simple yet amazing tips to check the symmetry of your work and that is hold your profile up to a mirror. your mind sees things one way and in the mirror, you will see it backwards. standing at different distances will allow you to do the other checks. if you have already drawn it on a grid, you will not have inappropriate deck level height differences. the grids will also help you when you match the front view to the back view when you make sure it is overall in balance.

Another check I developed is drawing an elliptical around the profile – from bow to transom. The circle edges have to be at the waterline. Grab the circle at the top of any deck to see if it is within the circle. It’s a good trick to use generally [it is interesting to see this in many yachts to understand it fully]. I took the liberty of using the KOGO pic already posted to draw a (blue) elliptical. Since it is on an angle it is not perfect, so I drew a black line to imitate the waterline. She rests within the circle even tho her aft decks do not traditionally extend all the way back. To see the line the decks would follow if they did extend aft, draw the circle to the top of the upper-most deck to find the most pleasing angle made by the circle. This method also points out the original KOGO drawing with the upper deck was over-drawn a bit, thus a more pleasing profile was built in the end.

Very interesting exercise with the elliptical against the decks. Would this be another way of saying that some designs stretch the decks too long for the length of the hull? Obviously they were reaching for greater interior volume, but ....

Kelly

indeed! there is a reason some designs are sweeter than others, and i never believed there were no rules when it came to yacht design. so, i looked really hard and long at this. each deck plays a role based on the length at the waterline. i never used it against inflation (lol) but i don't think so upon reflection. it merely is a guide for the outer limits. i found there is a trick to using this elliptical too. the deck for the forward angle is usually a lower deck and the aft angle can be a deck higher.

I've not heard this 'mirror trick' brought up in quite a while, but I learned of it long ago. It is surprising how a design can look so different when view from the opposite side.

This discussion of hand drawn lines verses computer lines reminded me of a comment of the difficulty of drawing a pretty sheer or bow line (the two both important lines) with a computer.

I wrote this letter to Soundings a number of years ago:
_____________________________________
Soundings Article by Ted Danforth, Jr.

Dear Ted,

Just finished reading your article about Ray Hunt in the June issue of Soundings, I wanted to write and let you know how much I truly enjoyed the article.

You captured not only the factual history, but more importantly, some of the essence of being involved with yachts and yacht design itself….."the measure of total understanding of the nature of a boat."

And most importantly, you included the oft forgotten element, the sheer line. What a terribly important factor! Romantically stated, but oh so true, "it is simply her sheer … sheer beauty that is. She enters the harbor like a beautiful woman entering a room. Her sheer is the line we try to get right when we doodle boats." So many of today’s boats lack this beauty, and correspondingly, some of the essence of yesteryear’s yachting.

Your article brought some of that feeling back to me…some of that feeling that first inspired me to want to learn of sailing yachts and their design ….that had me putting together a scrapbook of designs, both good and poor, for future reference.

Now it so happens that I got quite heavily involved with multihull craft because here is where free thought and innovation abounded (ed note:in the sailing industry), and here it is even tougher to create a pretty sheer line. Probably a couple of the best examples I might reference would be Peter Wormwood's 60 'Indigo' design (http://runningtideyachts.com/design-references/design-references-1.html) and a few of Peter Spronk’s cats. With Spronk's designs, you would have to invoke your French observation, "you must suffer to be beautiful." I'm going to try and create a few nice looking multi-hull designs myself, and maybe in collaboration with a more artistic person than myself. My first attempt is this 65' gamefishing design sporting a rather unusual sailing rig. While the rig shape may appear strange to some, I think I got the sheer and the deckhouse lines right.
__________________________________________
sorry for the sailing content in this predominately powerboat discussion but the subject matter seemed appropriate.

my appreciation of you adding to the value of the sheer.

another absolutely MISSED and MISUNDERSTOOD value in understanding your work is this article:
http://www.nautica.it/superyacht/485/design/shapes.htm

it has to be the most valuable piece of information on the internet!

you can further look at projects launched over the last 20 years and see the learning curve, inbalance and why, as we look forward, i ask - do not replicate the past. [lol]

"a real designer that controls the job DOES AND CONTROLS THE SOLID 3D MODEL in computer, in order that HE HANDELS THE YARD A FINALISED DESIGN"

Got it Teenna (I think). However, to provide a design that is truly "finalised", would not the designer have to possess the full capablities of a NA office? Which is contrary to the trend to have the Designer and NA separate sources? So your essential objection is to this trend to separate the design tasks? Have the Designers return to the fold in NA offices?

Kelly

Let me show you the result of my 2D drawings on the first page of this thread

http://www.yachtforums.com/forums/28649-post15.html

We have now launched the first boat and have made a few sea trials. It performed better than predicted, which is nice as it is my first complete design including the hull. She was doing 46 knots and still hit the rev limiter with the biggest props available and she is cruising 40 knots.

The interior also came out well and at the recent Stockholm Boat Show people gave us compliments all day long for utilising the space to the best.

All of this was concieved in 2D with no need for 3D except for running the CNC-robots for the plugs.

My conclusion is still that (with a little luck) what comes out is what you put in. No more no less...

(She is 40´= 12.50 m x 3.65 m, displacing 6.5 tonnes light with 2 x Volvo Penta D6 350 DP)

No models or tank testing Lars?

Kelly

Lars,
Congrats on the successful sea trials.
It must have been exciting to see your "vision" turn into reality.
Arnie

Thanks Arnie, yes it was a little special since we never got time to test any model and jumped directly to fullscale moulds. I have been reading about big producers testing stepped hulls for both two and three years to get it right...

Maybe we could have got it better too, but both speed and handling is already more than we could have asked for.

(It seems as we are going about ten knots faster than our competitors, which means 25-30 percent less fuel)

Sweet boat Lars! Will this be offered to the general public, or is it mainly for commercial operators?

Kelly

Oh oh oh...what if the yard can not build the yacht from the 3D model of the designer?? What if the designer's interior sucks? I am involved in a large yacht project that sucks
The interior designer, I think, did not talk to much during the project initialization with technical experts. Instead of that he or she discuss their pretty and "warm" pictures with the owner (or his ersonal team) and the sales from the shipyard. There are different kind of surfacing. I saw beatiful surface model of a very large yacht in Rhino. The surface or the 3D model that should be build by the shipyard is DIFFERENT! I know that, since I am involved in several projects.

On the bright side jmr - in such a case at least nobody can blame the yard ????

Kelly