shipconstructor and inventor

[Anonymous]

has anyone used shipconstructor and inventor together? do they work well?

[Anonymous]

Stee,

what exactly do you want to know? Our company is at the moment asking
several software-developers for price and a thorough description of their
software. one of the subjects is how it will work with Inventor and Autocad.
We use both Inventor and Autocad for the moment - but as you understand we
plan to purchase some extra software to be able to design hull's and
ship-structure more efficiently.

Do you use any other software than Inventor at the moment? What do you
intend to design with Shipcontructer?

Regards

--
Ole Christer Lilledal
Dell Workstation 370
P4 3.2 GHz E.E.
2 Gb ram
ATI FireGL V3100
Inventor 10 SP3 / Inventor 11 SP1
WinXP SP3
wrote in message news:5261528@discussion.autodesk.com...
has anyone used shipconstructor and inventor together? do they work well?

[Anonymous]

Im looking to return to a company I worked for 6 years ago who primarily use 3d AutoCAD to design 30m+ luxury motor yachts and large high speed ferries. The company is bringing in shipconstructor, I guess to do a lot of the design. currently they only use IV to do clash detection on pipe runs etc. Im an AutoCAD expert but much prefer working with IV which Ive been doing comercially for the last 5 years and longer entertaining myself. Ive implemented IV in 2 companies now and would like to, given the opportunity, do the same for this company which is why I want to know how it intergrates with shipconstructor so I can answer any awkward questions that come up.

[Anonymous]

Well Stee, I'm not in the exact same lane as yousince we will be using the
software for design of semi submersible vessels mainly.
I'm also to be considered as an experienced Autocad user (12 years) and have
been using Inventor for the last 4 years.

We have put in a request for Shipconstructor - and if we get some usefull
information I will come back to you.

May I ask were you are situated? I'm in Stavanger, Norway and working for a
company called Global Maritime.

Regards

--
Ole Christer Lilledal
Dell Workstation 370
P4 3.2 GHz E.E.
2 Gb ram
ATI FireGL V3100
Inventor 10 Sp3 / Inventor 11 Sp1
XP SP3

[xavierl]

shipconstructor seems to sit on top of autocad. thus it does not integrate with inventor.
For ship construction, you either stay with Rhino or AutoCAD or go high end like ugs or Catia. The mid range softwares are not really intended for ships(Inventor SW etc)
regards
Frans X Liebenberg

[Anonymous]

Im in the UK but emigrating to australia where the company is. Ive used IV in the UK on 10-60m comercial boats and like fxlxd
says its not ideal. I worked on some quite complex hulls from pro engineer thru autoship and finally into IV, they were pretty messy when they got there. IV is evolving though and it can handle surfaces a lot better now. Its ideal for intergration with other departments for eg stock control.

also just like autocad is better than a board for designing boats, IV is better than autocad. you use whats on offer to the best of your abbilities

[Anonymous]

While I don't have anything to add to the Shipconstructor question here is a company that uses Solidworks to supposidly design a whole Yacht.

http://www.solidworks.com/pages/successes/viewsuccess.html?record=2064

[Anonymous]

In the uk there are 4 main small luxury yacht companies, fairline use solid edge and sealine use inventor dont know what the other 2 use. oinks me that sealine are only 45 mins away from me but wont give me a job, ah well crap pay, long hours, their loss...

[Anonymous]

> ... to supposidly design a whole Yacht.

You're reading more into that than it says and, well, you should never swallow
that stuff to start with ... nasty!

http://www.westportyachts.com/yachts/westport164/

[Anonymous]

I should have worded my response better, I realize that marketing stuff tends to blow stuff out of proportion, I remember a few releases back Autodesk talked about Inventor's advanced surfacing. Sure. I currently use Inventor and am happy with it (except Vault!) but I always keep current on the competition's software too.

http://www.westportyachts.com/careers/display-one.php?j_id=254

[Anonymous]

You missed the Joinery Designer position - AutoCAD. ';^)

> but I always keep current on the competition's software too.

It's odd how often it's put that way when there's so little real competition
except for the hearts of the 3D (the minds aren't yet developed) neophytes like
that outfit, if you can even believe that much of the article. As they mature
they'll settle into a few design software packages probably including one of the
so-called high end CAD systems.

Couple three years ago there was an Autodesk press release about, if memory
serves, a Chinese ship builder using Inventor for interior fitting and
mechanical systems. I'd guess its about the same with Westport and SW.
Personally, I wouldn't want to try to work and maintain 30K part assemblies in
either one. Still too many dangling carrots you need to upgrade annually and
patch that three times annually instability.

[Anonymous]

Sooo in the last 8 years has anyone had more experiences with Inventor and Ship design?

[stevec781]

Yes, after years of trying to work around the bugs that adesk refuses to fix I dumped inventor from my ship design business and went back to 2D, I dont even bother with Rhino, I just use Maxsurf, workshop and detail in 2D .  Inventor has 90% of what we need but the 10% that's missing is the most important 10% and makes the drawing process too slow.  You can model ships in Inv, but it's a very slow process.  Same can be said for all the other mid range CAD, they dont have the tools we need.

Shipconstructors marketing angle is spend more time in design to save $$ in production.  A program that slows the design process and hence makes it more expensive doesnt interest me either.

All of above in relation to metal boats, fibreglass would be a bit better.

[CianG]

I think it is a little bit dependent on the size of vessel you are building & your cad package budget.

For small vessels you could use rhino for modelling, basic hydrostatics & detailing (could use autocad lt for detailing).

As the vessel size gets bigger it's worth while investing in better cad packages.

Inventor could be a good option after the shell/hull has been defined (there are a number of packages out there that can assit in hull design).

The hull could then be imported into Inventor for structure, MEP & fitout.

Cian

[stevec781]

---

@CianG wrote:

Inventor could be a good option after the shell/hull has been defined (there are a number of packages out there that can assit in hull design).

The hull could then be imported into Inventor for structure, MEP & fitout.

Cian

---

In theory yes, in reality the bugs make this a very slow and time consuming task.  So bad that one on my naval architects quit because of the daily frustration of parts not updating, and it was only 25m long.  If they fixed the bugs it would be ok, but an adesk senior person told me they wont be fixed because not enough people complain about them.  Not so bad for small boats up to 10m but then they can be done in Rhino which is a fraction of the cost.  Inv is not a ship design tool, and attempting to use it in ship design has been a disaster.

Ship Constructor exists because mid range cad cant do the job.

[CianG]

So the bugs are marine related or inventor in general?

[stevec781]

They are not marine specific, just happen to be critical to a ship design workflow.  They have all been reported, acknowledged and are at the bottom of the priority list.

[Anonymous]

Ive used Inventor extensivly on ship design.  generally surface models are more useful because you can integrate them into other software like femap and sesam genie.  Also surface models produce nice single line drawings for autocad export...

it takes lots of planning but with powerful techniques like skeletal modelling and a bit of ilogic ship design with inventor is not just possible it is very good, a lot will depend on the skillset of the user

[stevec781]

Did you create drawings for shipyard production and flatten parts for NC cutting?

I would be very interested to know how you create the frame stiffener punchouts and clean up the slivers for cutting, how you flatten your curved shell plates and get frame station marking lines on them, how you flatten your hull stiffeners for cutting, how you model your frame rider bars, how you model and mate tripping brackets in the bow, how you add limber holes to stiffeners and once done how your model behaves when you change the hull shape.  It can all be done, I can just do it much faster in 2D. 

As for user experience, the best support people from my VAR could not find a suitable work flow that dealt with the bugs which is why I ended up talking to adesk direct, and they had no idea either.  It also depends on what type of ship structure you design, and how much production detail you include, and of course how much time and budget you have for the project.

[Anonymous]

frame stiffener punchouts, each stiffener had the punchout surface extruded with the stiffener and all of them turned on or off with a parameter and ilogic

no slithers on the punchouts because they petrude thru the shell so cut all the frame to the shell extents. offsetting frame plate thickness was problematic because femap uses the mid plane of the frame but we model frame correct, offsetting fwd or aft depending on position to midships and just accept this for analysis

we didnt do the shell expansion and dont think it would be possible in inventor...

We did basic design, up to class approval on some very simple jackup ships, basically big boxes that only had shape in the bow and stern.  Because the shapes were so simple inventor is able to model the hull and this hull is derived into almost every part so as the hull shape changes our structure changes to suit.  We also relied heavily on excel for parameter input and of course autocad for the 2d drawings

Autocad has come a long way, some ilogic on the drawing exports from inventor and a few autocad scripts made it all quite streamlined.  Because inventor and autocad are generic drawing and modelling software we customized them quite heavily to achieve what we required required