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D MacPherson
 
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Default Carlson Hull program

I have used this for a couple of years for my students in an Intro to Nav
Arch class. They use it to develop a 3-view (plan, profile, body plan)
drawing, as well as small models. My observation is that the unwrapping is
based on a geodesic approach (i.e., attached triangles), not a developable
surface (i.e., unwrapped conic sections). As you get more curvature, the
geodesic can underpredict the real unwrapped length of the surface. Having
said that, I've never seen more than a small gap at the stem. We usually
plot these via the DXF - have you tried comparing plots from the nesting and
DXF through a CAD program? The DXF/CAD approach has the benefit of showing
the BHEAD locations on the CHINE and DECK plots. This is very valuable with
the proper alignment of pieces.

One other FYI - the DXF format exported by this program is not compatible
with all CAD programs. I've had good success with TurboCAD, Rhino and the
Voloview Express viewer. I'm sure there are others.


Regards,

Don

Donald M. MacPherson
VP Technical Director
HydroComp, Inc.
http://www.hydrocompinc.com

[2004 Propeller Seminar - January 16th in Tampa, Florida.]


"William R. Watt" wrote in message
...
Has anyone sucessfully built a boat out of unfolded panels from this hard
chine design program?

I set up stations and made a cardboard scale model of a boat by wrapping
the cardboard around some frames, marking, unfolding, and cutting. Then I
put the offsets into the Carlson program and used the "Patterns/Nesting"
feature to arrange the panels on sheets of plywood and print out points
for hand plotting. I plotted and cut the panels from cardboard, same scale
as the model, and taped the cutouts togehter sticth-and-tape style. The
result isn't the same as the model. There is a big gap at the stem, the
topside panels are 25% wider, and the it just doesn't fit the frames.

(I've been back seeing if I can alter the offests to get a better fit and
find the auto spline makign S-curves in the keel at the stem. Very

strange.)

Am wondering if others have got good unfolded panels from the program.

(The boat is the 15ft solo cruiser design I've been documenting under
"Boats" on my website.)


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