Purely a hobbyist, making radio controlled boats both electric and yachts, I
have been trying to find a simple CAD system which does not cost the earth
(even free!!!!).
The main use would be to develope hull lines so that I could have a "Look
See" before construction.
Any advice or hints?
JB
Intellicad would probably be your best bet. It's not free... but it can be
had for about a tenth of price of Autocad. The one I would suggest is from
Bricscad. You can down load a free 30 day trial copy from them at...
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... I don't know of any free cad packages.
Take care,
TimB
Simple enough to let me perform the functions of hull design.
I am computer literate and a retired engineer so some degree of difficulty
is not a problem as long as there is not too much gobble de gook
Any input welcome
JB
$895 is not buttons - will have to stick to my drawing board and cardboard
mock-ups
at that price.
Pensioners can't splash cash even though the product looks good
I may try the trial version if they have one.
Thanks
JB
I'm not trying to confuse things for you, but there are applications out
there that will model shapes like boat hulls much better than AutoCAD. I
draw (usually) orthogonal buildings so I have zero experience in this. You
have been directed to one such application, but as you point out, it's not
to be had for pocket change.
I'm not sure what you hope to get by drafting your designs with CAD. If you
can draw on paper, I'd stick with that for your purposes. Any CAD package is
going to take some time to learn. Why spend all that time learning CAD when
you could be building models, which I take it you like to do. (I thought old
boat designers built physical models, and developed sections from them.)
I used to do that . Now I build the whole thing in 3d before I ever start
on the physical model. Virtually eliminates those "now that I look at it, I
sould have done things a bit differently" moments.
Don't try the trial version of Rhinoceros; it will hook you so hard that you
won't feel bad about buying the full version.
Seriously, I don't know anything about Intellicad or some of the other choices
that have been mentioned. But among the few CAD packages to which I have
access, Rhino does curves and surfaces better than any other.
I deal with boatyards all over the world. Most of the ones that use CAD, use
AutoCAD, in 2D. But a few of them use Rhinoceros, to model real boats in real
3D.
One other thing. I can't quite put my finger on why, but AutoCAD's display
presentation is somehow easier to interact with than Rhino's at low
resolutions, so once you buy Rhino, you'll be looking for a large, high
resolution display, too.
-Mike-
If you know how to, and are willing, to repartition your hard drive and can
spare 2.5 to 3 gigabytes you can get a Linux suite (I'd recommend Mandrake
10) and that comes with a CAD programme.
The Mandrake 10 installation package is available on ebay
I have had a look at this option but it would probably mean wiping my hard
drive and restarting to do the conversion properly.
As it may or may not be suitable, I will not endeavour to attempt
installation
Many thanks
JB
Hi JB,
I don't have an experiance in this area either.
Just for fun try playing around with SILO.
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've found that it is the most intuitive modeling program around and
it is very cheap. The shapes that it makes just seem to be naturaly
flowing and beautiful.
Best of luck
Zac.
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