one for the boat/ship designers

[2Kamser]

was just wondering, been thinking of doing an optimist sailboat for my brother in law
he and his big brother had one home built back in the early 70's
my question is as follows:
i think i would need formers to get the shape proper, which is the best way to do them?
been fiddling with Sketchup and almost done with the model itself, now i want to do the "skeleton" of it, or should i have started with the skeleton and gone from there?

[lancer525]

I use a free hull modeling program called "Delft Ship" to do my hull forms. I then use another program called "Lamina" to unfold all the pieces of the hulls, and then I use "Ally CAD" to print out the DXF files output by Lamina to get my final parts. Ally CAD and Delft Ship are free, Lamina isn't but it's the single best 3-D Unfolder program I have ever seen. It's a bit kludgy to do it with three programs, but I couldn't afford Rhino! Rhino will work very cooperatively with Lamina, so that might be a way to go for those who have the coin to purchase the programs.

HTH

[2Kamser]

thanks lancer, will have a look at those progs