| Free and shareware boat design software
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Hulls
software Develop your own multichine hulls up to ten chines using
Carlson Design's excellent share ware. The download is at the bottom of the
page - do make sure you have the required Visual Basic run-time file
vbrun300.dll in your System folder. An alternative is Carene
software. The site also includes sail design software.
Alternative Hulls
tutorial The author of these pages has written
an alternative tutorial for Gregg Carlson's Hulls software, which
can be used for developing hulls with up to six chines. A link to a
page of hulls including a number of classic types can be found
elsewhere in these pages.
Carene update Carene's promoters have decided that Carene50 should be withdrawn so if you have it bookmarked you may now find your link to it dead. However, they have decided to offer a free download of Carene 2002uk, which will allow the user to create a hull with two chines in a similar way to Carene 50 and will allow saving and printing of designs and export to dxf files . If you want to create a hull with three chines or to use the multi plank setting (up to 20 planks evenly spaced) for round bilge hulls with the additional feature of auto-calculation and output of plank overlaps for clinker construction, you will need to purchase the licence.
Test out your
design Test out your design in detail with
Hullforms 6, a DOS computer-aided design and analysis-style program.
Grab it now, while your computer will still drive DOS
programs...
Calculators
Java-based calculators for
working out various things, including capsize risk.
FloatPBO Spreadsheet
This boat design spreadsheet
calculator from the UK boating journal Practical Boat Owner looks as
if it could be useful.
Plyboats The highly regarded
Plyboats boat design software is now available in the form of a usable
demo.
Carlson Design
Goodies Gregg
Carlson's page now includes a pair of free mast design programs for round
wooden masts. The first develops strakes for round masts, while the second
calculates mast size and strength for stayed and unstayed rigs based on
sail area and wood types.
Hull optimising
software The
Michlet hull optimiser is free for personal use. I gather Hans Friedel
used it when he was working on one of his recent canoe designs.
New free CAD source If you're getting a bit fed up with the free
version of TurboCAD, you might like to try this one. It looks a
bit complex, but it does offer three dimensional working.
Canoe design software Check out the downloads area at this site for
some impressive-looking canoe design software complete with a voluminous
manual.
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