i was wondering if any body had messed with any type of hull design solfware or what the companys are using just thought it would be fun to play around with

freeship will get ya started

http://sourceforge.net/projects/freeship/

I use Rhino, it is also available as a trial version but is not marine specific. It helps if you have experience with some form of 3D environment otherwise the learning curve can be somewhat discouraging. Many of these have some pretty good tutorials, Rhino has one of the best and is a very powerful program if you have the time to put in.

http://www.rhino3d.com/

You can download a full version to demo but only allows you twenty five saves.

I have SolidWORKS and have done a coulpe Cat and Deep V hulls... even replicated the exterior of my 31SS... it is a 3d modeler and you need to know how to use its functionality. I had been using it since 98' and havn't used it much for 5 years since getting out of the ME field... however, just about any 3d modeling package should suffice...

I'd be willing to bet that most companies use: solid works, UG, pro-e, auto cad, mechanical desktop, catia, or inventor. All/Most programs allow the user to perform fea and cfd analysis. Unfortunatly none of these programs are cheap or easy to come by...

One seat of Unigraphics NX (ug) with all the modules is worth more then my boat but it has some amazing functionality!! Have used it a lot on many different boat projects!

Speaking from a structural design standpoint, I've always wondered what kinds of load cases performance boat builders apply to their hulls for analysis.

I have no experience with hull analysis (aerospace background), but my guess is that mass loads would be placed to simulate motors, drives, seats, etc and a uniform pressure load distributed across the bottom. The complex element is imposing g levels. Not sure how this is done in the marine industry. Anyone with hull design experience can chime in...

Great topic; do not get discouraged using the CAD/CFD stuff; it will become second nature if you stick w/it and pay huge rewards. Lot's of stuff is free and available via cloud. A builder of your design, now that's huge.

Same here. I have to wonder if some critical load distributions may not be so uniform.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computa...fluid_dynamics