A Good Boat Building Software?

[Fish Fry]

Is there a decent software that's geared toward boat building, hull stress, etc?

Ideally I'd like to make my own small-boat plans and send them to have the pieces cut, instead of using a kit. Otherwise, I'm looking possibly at a $900 Specmar plan.

I have no experience with AutoCAD or any other like software, so I'm looking for something that's user friendly and designed for boat building.

I've tried the search, but I'm not sure how to group words to narrow the results yet. Thanks in advance.

 

[Ned L]

There are a number of softwares out there (I'm not familiar with them), but I believe they are hull form development softwares and won't do what you are looking for (or at least simply for small boats).

One that I've heard discussed is called something like 'draftship' I think.

 

[jbcurt00]

I have used a few to sort of sample how what I was thinking/planning in my mind and 2D w graph paper, into a 3D model that I could tweak in an infinite number of ways.

FreeShip was 1, IIRC.

It also has hydrodynamic modeling.

I only used it for basic stuff and never ended up using any of the plans I developed. Ended up getting an already established plan, and tweaked it a little based on stuff I learned using FreeShip.

Good luck

This ties into your other topic about a welder:
Http://forums.iboats.com/forum/boat-...r-for-new-boat

If you'd post a response or 2 to the replies you get when you start topics, you'd probably get more replies.......

 

[Scott Danforth]

Short answer - non cheaper than buying plans. Dozens of cad programs and dozens of hull design programs, non really easy to use for the non naval engineer