I don't know SolidWorks at all. I have heard good things about TurboCAD and
might be using it if I hadn't a lot of history with AutoCAD. I tried
IntelliCAD at one point and found it satisfactory, but buggy in a few
annoying places.

As for using Excel to generate Scripts, a long time ago (in a galaxy far far
away) I started to enter hull planes from a table of offsets by hand and
realized that I would have to enter each point four times (for most planes)
and decided there had to be a better way.

In Excel, you can also do things like calculate and prepare to draw the
horizontal planes of decks and tank tops, so that you see how much area you
actually have at any given level.

Unfortunately, for those building a new hull, my planes method doesn't have
the advantage of actually computing accurate offsets. The reason most boats
were lofted full size was that offsets pulled from a scale drawing were not
accurate enough to build a full size hull that was fair. By actually
drawing the hull in CAD, you can get accurate offsets and cut the molds
without lofting. This can be a big time saving.



--
Jim Woodward
www.mvFintry.com


..


"Marty" wrote in message
...
I only mentioned some CAD software I have actually worked with for a
living, of which Solidworks is my favorite, but very expensive.
I like Jim Woodwards way of using AutoCad. Yes, it is possible, Jim, and
I liked your Fintry hull, pretty cool. And just in passing you gave me a
great hint by mentioning excel for the planes etc, I should be able to
do this in Solidworks as well and probably quicker...

AutoCad is also very expensive, and AutoCad LT does not do 3d as far as
I know.
But you might be able to find an educational version of AutoCad or
Soldworks somewhere, if you want to go that way. Solidworks is a lot
easier to learn, I can get new people up to basics in a week, or less if
I have time.