The next pictures show the selected (yellow) hull lines and the lofted hull as a result.
#Using construction lines in moi3d full#
Now all of this you only have to do for one side of the hull because you can later mirror the one side to create a full hull. I was able to re-create the hull in the CAD system in a few days but that includes a lot of learning time and trying different methods. After that they used mechanical tracing tools to scale the lines. Then they cut the solid models into sections at set intervals which produced the actual hull lines they now could trace onto paper. Naval architects used scaled wood models which they shaped with a lot of elbow crease, chisels and sandpaper, until they had the shape they wanted.
They didn’t have computers or even calculators so creating actual drawings must have taken weeks if not month.
Now imagine the type of effort that was necessary to create a complex hull such as the Zodiac’s 100 years ago when the schooner was actually build.
#Using construction lines in moi3d software#
Now with today’s tools such as CAD software you can create and design such a complex surface in a couple of days. This step is the most important one in this process because the CAD software will use these lines to loftthe hull. The tricky part here is do the lines in the correct sequence or you will get lost with all these lines. So for each hull curve I tried to use no more than 5 control points and dragged the control points until the curve matched the line in the picture. I remembered that using fewer control points on the B-splines will make the lofting easier and the resulting surface smoother. This process was actually quite time consuming since it required a high decree of accuracy and I tried various methods for creating the B-splines. Then I started tracing the hull lines and arranged them in the proper 3D position. I took some pictures of these hull lines and used the same technique as above arranging each view and scaling the pictures to match the dimensions. At this point I remembered that I saw some hull lines of the Zodiac which were created a few years back. The following 2 pictures show that result.Īs you can see the result isn’t all that useful yet because the lofting function just didn’t have enough data based on the 2 curves to create a hull. After that I have 2 three dimensional curves ( B-splines) inside the CAD model which now allows me to loft the hull. I could now trace the visible hull lines along the picture and approximate the lines under water based on a few dry dock pictures. The picture below shows the initial setup in MOI3d. Then I scaled the pictures inside the CAD system until the hull measured from bow to stern 127′ which is the known LOAtoday. In the CAD system I created some very basic dimensions of the boat which is 127′ long and 26′ wide and draws about 16′ below the waterline. So I started to look for pictures of the Zodiac from which I can trace some rough lines of the hull above water and approximate lines under water based on pictures from the hull in dry dock. I found a nice side shot from the zodiac and a rough interior layout plan from the website which I loaded into the CAD system and placed them in the proper planes. But I wanted to get a head start and create an approximated 3D hull CAD model which I can then use to 3D print little hull models. To get an accurate model of the hull we will do a 3D hull laser scan when the Zodiac is in dry dock in March 2013. And most of the hull you can’t see because it is under water and that is a good thing because that is what keeps the boat afloat. It is mathematically a very complex surface but optically has very smooth lines and a nice flow to it. The most complex part from a CAD modeling perspective is the boats hull. Our ultimate goal is to reproduce them by creating a 3D CAD model of the entire boat. In my first post I talked about the lack of any available blue prints for the Zodiac.