Hello Pat_craft.
I like to build ships from scratch too. But I use another software for this work. I mean simple shipbuilding software which allow to get planarization (smoothing) surface of ship body. This is very simple process, but not very fast. I mean DELFTShip or FREEShip software. The last one is russian version which I use. The both software make a ship body skin unfolding wich is very important for modelling. In addition to this software features can make an export of project to file dxf format with 2D and 3D poliline. So this way you can get 2D or 3D model in ACAD and in another alike software.
Good luck.