Hi,
I want to get into RC sailing. I have sailed many yachts from small dinghies to ocean racing yachts.
What is a good CAD program? Anyone can say “autoCAD”, but I am after specifics: exact program name/version, a website, additional modules which are required. I am not interested in people ‘plugging’ their own product. I need factual info from you guys, real users of this software.
Thanks in anticipation,
Brad
Do a search of forums as this has been discussed in the forums. Hullform is one word to search on. I downloaded a free version.
A simple, free program that I used to design a rowboat some years ago was called Hull Designer, or full name Chine Hull Designer 1.86. Found at carlsondesign.com I thought it was useful.
Since you mention AutoCAD, I wonder if you are looking for something more general than Hull Designer. I used to work with something called Solid Designer. It was a pretty good program. Parametric offers a free but crippled later version, now called CoCreate. http://www.ptc.com/offers/tryout/pe2.htm Might be very useful for models. It’s limited to 60 piece assemblies, I think.
The Windows of the CAD world is of course Solidworks. I used 2006, 2007, and, maybe, 2008 (those are versions). Now you’re talking real dollars.
Either CoCreate or Solidworks requires a substantial investment of your time to learn it. I suspect CoCreate requires much less, but I don’t really know as I started with it back when it was just a 2D program and learned more with time. But I always thought it was reasonably well thought out. Still, it’s probably going to be an orphan program, and the license requires an internet connection so I would guess it will die sometime before the heat death of the universe.