Dear Rhino users,
I have developed a plugin to help in ship hull shape design, recreation and fairing. I am looking now for beta testers which would like to share with me their opinions about Hull Shape Assistant.
I am using this plugin already in my daily job and its quite stable. There are still some places for improvements, and I still have a lot of ideas, but I would like to get some feedback from others.
FEATURES SUMMARY:
Automatic joining and trimming of surfaces, according to defined limiting top, transom and/or skeg shape;
Automatic generation of flat side and flat bottom;
Realtime information regarding distance from reference geometry;
Realtime generation of sections, buttocks and waterlines;
Simplified control over surface curvature and zebra analysis;
Realtime information regarding ship hydrostatic parameters (small non-watertight imperfections are allowed);
Simple clipping over length;
Simple compact panel for control of plugin functionality;
REQUESTED FEATURES / ROADMAP:
Option to choose between metric and imperial units system - currrently only metric is implemented;
Curvature graph for shape polysurfaces isolines - added in 0.2.8135-beta;
Clipping over length - added in 0.2.8135-beta;
Generation of hydrostatic tables;
Automatic comparison of generated hydrostatic tables to existing data from spreadsheet;
Autofairing based on minimizing of bending energy - this is huge one, I cannot promise anything;
Finalize user interface for macOS.
Command for adding recesses in hull.
RELEASE NOTES:
0.2.8167-beta
minor fixes
0.2.8135-beta
added clipping over length functionality
added shape isolines curvature graph for direction U or V
0.2.8129-beta
improvements in calculation of immersed volume used for calculation of hydrostatic parameters
0.2.8102-beta
fixed bugs with trim and perpendiculars position controls in user panel
Hull Shape Assistant beta is already on package manager server. If anyone would be interested I can provide details how to get free license file by PM or email.
I am interested in giving this a try though as a yacht designer, I have had little experience with designing hull forms such as those used for commercial vessels like those you have shown. I have added an example of my work in Rhino V5 through V7.
whole concept of modeling is based on defining shape parts, where some parts could be made based on curves for loft, or as already predefined nurbs surface (I still investigate how to include here subds). Output is polysurface which is recreated when one of input objects is changed. There is option to analyse already defined polysurface.
This kind oy yacht you have shown may not need for example functions for automatic generation of flat bottom or flat side, but it may leverage “parametric” multisurface modeling for curved shape including transom. Also reference distance analysis and detailed hydrostatic parameters may be useful.
You may find usefull also viewport width compression for buttocks investigation. There are inflection points shown on buttocks. If their density is high they may give impression of inflection lines:
Dear @Joseph_Culbert, @Robb , did you managed to find it in package manager? If not I think this might be yak server issue and I would like to resolve this.
I have Rhino7.15 update and have checked the ‘include pre-releases’ box and when scrolling down through what is available I still don’t see anything named ‘hull’ UNTIL I looked closely at your screenshot above and realize that you did a search for hull to get your Hull Assistant to show up. I now have loaded and restarted Rhino and have your tool dropdown at the top and have generated the computer ID and here is the result;
Opening a Rhino 7 format file.
Command: _HSAComputerID
HSA: This computer ID is:
HSA: 1F617F70DEBCA4FE8D34DBDF2F07ACB61EE84F23
HSA: Please provide this ID to your distributor/vendor to get valid license file. You can provide list of IDs for multiple computers.
Command: _CommandHistory
Looking forward to hearing from you and using your tools! Thank you!
This looks like a very promising plug-in for marine design and I look forward to assisting in the beta! I’ll be graduating with a BS in NAME in May so I’m sure I will get a chance to use this both academically and professionally. I will shoot you a DM shortly with my workstation ID.
One question, do you see this tool eventually being a competitor with Orca3D’s hull design tool?
I am not very familiar with Orca3D hull shape design, but as far as I know, for a lot of usecases HSA could replace it.
HSA is concentrated at design, fairing and recreation of hull shape made of multiple surfaces. Orca3D however is generally a way more complex design toolbox. I believe each of them may find their users, some may even use both.
I have just pushed version 0.2.8129 to package manager. For now I have dropped idea of sections integration usage since I believe that I have found better solution.
