Autoship

Hull Design & Surface Modeling Program

Autoship hull design/surface modeling program combines the graphical user interface of Windows with the dexterity of NURBS (Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline) mathematics, the high-end CAD standard for surface modeling. Autoship enables you to create any hull shape from a racing yacht to a super tanker quickly and efficiently.

Autoship Key Features:

• 3D surface modeling
• 4 simultaneous views or single view
• Multiple Zoom and Pan Curvature displays for curves and surfaces
• Ten levels of Undo and Redo
• Hierarchical groupings of objects
• Quick colour rendering in the (NEW) OpenGL viewer
• Metric or imperial units
• Dynamic update during editing (NEW FEATURE)
• Slider control of control point weight (NEW FEATURE)
• Produce chamfers and fillets
• Surface - surface join (NEW FEATURE)
• Group select edit and control points
• Surface to surface intersection with trimming
• Editing of surfaces or trim curves results in immediate update of the trim
• Cut embedded curves at their crossing points
• Developable surface generation plus the ability to export the flattened surface
• Attach a curve feature. This function allows the user to match a selected surface edge to all or part of a curve
• Built in foil shape library
• On-screen measurement tools - lengths, angles and rise angles can be measured
• Visual project Navigator (NEW FEATURE)
• Instant hydrostatics - 20 hydrostatic parameters as well as a graph of section curves are shown
• Extensive offset table generation. Offsets are now shown in millimeters, fractional inches, or feet-inches-eighths
• Tools for matching of existing hull forms
• Conversion of existing REP files
• Exports & Imports DXF and IGES
• DXF output of flattened developable surfaces
• Export offsets to Offshore Racing Council International
• Measurement System Velocity Prediction Program
• Comprehensive context-sensitive help system provides the user with valuable information on all features

3D Viewing 

The user-friendly interface enables the designer to work either in 4 views simultaneously (profile, plan, body and rotatable 3-D) or one of the views singly merely at the click of a button. The 4 views may be dynamically resized at any time and may be individually panned. There are 10 levels of zoom/unzoom. Also featured are 10 levels of undo/redo to trace and retrace design steps. And you can specify multiple light sources and generate realistic, Z-buffer renderings with smooth shading.

Object Based Hierarchy 

Autoship's building blocks consist of Points, Curves, Surfaces, Polyobjects and Groups. Groups are collections of objects, including other groups, which may be scaled, rotated, mirrored, offset, and multiply instanced to allow very complex structures from a minimal number of objects. Changes to an object are propagated through the groups containing it.

Points

Points may be free in space or embedded on a curve or surface. Curves may be free, embedded on another curve or surface or projected on to a surface, and the curves ends may be attached to points.

Curves

Curves may be free or embedded on surfaces or other curves. There are several methods available to create a curve: specifying endpoints, sketching, forming an arc or rectangle, projection onto a surface, lofting through points, by intersecting surfaces, as offset from another curve, as foil shape, as row or column of a surface or by geodesic offset from another embedded curve. Surface edges may be attached to a curve or another surface.

Surfaces

Create by specifying dimensions, by rotating a curve about an axis, by extruding a curve along a vector, by sweeping one curve along another, by ruling between two curves, by multi-conic development (developable surface) between two curves, by offset from another surface, by blending between surfaces, by skinning through a set of curves or by joining two surfaces.

Navigator

Displays the tree structure of a project and gives quick access to object properties and operations.

Curvature Display

There are curvature displays for both curves and surfaces. A "porcupine quill" display is available for both curves and surfaces, and a color-mapped rendering shows mean curvature or gaussian curvature of a surface.

Engineering Accuracy

The user can specify a tolerance for output and curves and surfaces are automatically refined to meet or exceed that tolerance. This enables the user to choose high accuracy for NC cutting or to specify a larger tolerance value during design to save on computation. Models may be exported and imported in 2D or 3D via industry-standard DXF and IGES file formats. A 4 view DXF will output a complete lines plan.

Hydrostatics/Resistance

Autoship comes with built-in Quick Hydrostatics, with equilibrium calculation, plus fast links to Autohydro for full hydrostatic analyses and to Autopower for resistance and powering prediction.

Hardware Required: For optimum performance we recommend a fast Pentium with 132Mb of RAM, 40Mb free disk space, 8MB graphics card with OpenGL acceleration and a monitor display of at least 1024-768.