Terrance Egolf

[Terrance Egolf]

Hello, Brad. Thank you for your kind comments.

I will be responding shortly at your personal email.

(If you can, you may want to remove your email from your post to avoid unwanted spam …!

Terry

[Terrance Egolf]

Hi Jamie.

Since no one else has responded, I’ll take a shot.

I assume you are a Windows user, since the software does not run natively on other kinds of operating systems.

You can easily see the date of creation for files by modifying your Windows File Explorer view. Navigate to the folder where your DELFTship file of interest is stored. At the top of the screen should be four tabs labeled File, Home, Share, and View. Click on the View tab.

This tab provides a variety of options for viewing the files and folders at this location. In the Current view menu group is a choice called Add columns. Click on the expand arrow to view the other options. One of those options is “Date created,” which I think is what you want. Click on that to display the creation dates for all files and folders in this location.

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I hope this will answer your question.

Terry

 

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[Terrance Egolf]

Hello, Pidgee.

It sounds like you are trying to produce waterline patterns of the hull at various heights above the baseline, correct? Would these be for creating templates for a lift model, where you will be carving a solid block glued up from wooden lifts?

I suggest that you start by creating a horizontal, rectangular plane subdivided as many times as needed by interior edges, both transverse and longitudinal, which forms a surface on which to “draw” the hull’s waterline at Z = xxx. Assign the rectangle to its own layer, then place the rectangle at the desired z-coordinate so it intersects the hull surface. Be sure that the interior edge of the rectangle is aligned transversely exactly at the centerline before doing the intersection.

Create an intersection of the hull layer with the rectangle, inserting the points into the rectangle’s layer.

Turn off the hull layer, and delete the surface of the rectangle outside the resulting intersection line, if desired (this isn’t strictly necessary). This provides a waterline pattern for the hull at that height, and does not affect the hull shape itself. You may have to do some minor repair to the waterline edge. The Intersection feature can be a bit buggy.

For repeated intersection operations at different z-heights, you can save the original rectangle (before using it) as a .part file, then after each intersection operation at a different height, you can import the [rectangle].part and move it to the next height. This saves having to recreate the rectangle between each operation.

Also, you probably will want to include station lines in these patterns so you can align them correctly after printing the patterns.

Hope this helps.

Terry

• This reply was modified 3 months, 2 weeks ago by Terrance Egolf.
• This reply was modified 3 months, 2 weeks ago by Terrance Egolf.

[Terrance Egolf]

Great! Looks good!

[Terrance Egolf]

Glad to help, Ruud.

One thing I forgot to mention is that you will probably have to re-establish the crease edge between the hatch skirt and the deck once you are finished rebuilding the deck surface, since the process of adding adjacent faces often uncreases the common edges.

Terry

[Terrance Egolf]

RuudN,

The situation you are trying to model in DELFTship can be a little tricky. Trying to create a circular hole located in a surface at the centerline will fail if only the left half the surface is modeled. This is due to the underlying mathematics used to model curved edges in the program. The curve at the centerline control points will always be crimped.

I suggest that you first model both sides of the deck on a single layer. You can use the Mirror tool in the Transform menu group under the Tools tab to easily create the right side of the deck. Be sure to check the “Connect to existing points” option with zero offset “distance.” (Also, verify that you can remove the crease in the edge at the centerline after the Mirror operation to verify that both sides are truly one surface. The Mirror operation can sometimes be buggy.)

Next, rather than using the Subdivide control net feature in the program, which increases the number of all the faces in the model, I suggest just recreating the conical structure of the hatch using more faces to better define the intersection of the hole with the deck.

Then create the intersection between the deck and hatch layers, inserting the points in the hatch layer. This operation will create a smooth crease edge in the hatch layer that closely follows the deck curve.

Delete the portions of the hatch faces that lie below the deck surface.

Delete the faces in the deck that intersect the hatch.

Manually rebuild the deck faces in way of the hatch by using the Add face feature in the Face menu group by connecting points between the deck and hatch with edges. (See an example from my model, attached.)

I think this approach will solve your problem.

 

Terry

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[Terrance Egolf]

Hi Paul,

Do you have a set of 2D scaled plans or a diagram of the hull you are trying to model that you could attach to a post here? It might be easier to suggest an approach to getting your hull into DELFTship if we can see what you are working with.

If you would prefer to send a private message, you can contact me at txtbkauthor [at] gmail [dot] com.

Terry

[Terrance Egolf]

Paul,

For modeling from existing drawings or dimensions, I’d go with using full-sized dimensions, since things like the waterline and draft are already known. Also, you can use positions and dimensions in full-size units right off the reference drawings instead of having to calculate the scaled quantities.

If you are designing your own hull and those characteristics are not known, then you would probably  still  want to go full-size so you can use the program to determine them. Trying to do hydrostatic calculations for a 1/16 scale model would introduce all kinds of errors due to the mismatch of scale between desired model dimensions and the actual properties of water used to perform the hydrostatic calculations. I’m not a naval architect, but that would seem to be a problem.

Terry

[Terrance Egolf]

Here is the fifth file. Please read the first PDF. It includes all the appropriate attributions and disclaimers for this tutorial. I take responsibility for any errors or inaccuracies, since these files were written more than a year ago.

Terry

 

• This reply was modified 8 months, 1 week ago by Terrance Egolf.

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[Terrance Egolf]

Hello, Paul.

It sounds like you are asking for some assistance in setting up background images for your model. Are you working from pre-existing plans or are you wanting to create your own plans from WW II images?

I will provide you five files constituting a tutorial for setting up background images in DELFTship Free. I originally created these for my fellow members of the Model Ship World forums. Hopefully, you will find them useful.

The only detail I know I have omitted from the tutorial is that, for intersections to be visible in a model file, you must check “Intersections” for the layer(s) in which a particular intersection can be visible. This selection is made in the Edit window of the Layers Menu Group. Generally, if you make intersections visible for the entire hull itself, then they should be visible for the purpose of aligning any of the background images for the model.

The first four Tutorial files are attached here. The fifth file is in the next post (forum limitation).

Terry

• This reply was modified 8 months, 1 week ago by Terrance Egolf. Reason: Added content

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[Terrance Egolf]

Hello, Tidexon.

I feel your pain! 19th-century sailing ships typically have very complex geometry at the stern and transom.

For very curvy surfaces in this area, the only approach I have found that works in DELFTship is to increase the number of polygons, especially if you are trying to conform the model to existing plans.

The downside of this approach is that you eventually need to merge the control mesh in the aft area of the hull—with many polygons—into the area of the main hull that can be modeled with fewer polygons. This creates distinct nodes at the junction of converging edges that don’t fare well with the surrounding hull.

I have been working for nearly seven years on reconstructing the plans for a late 19th-century brigantine, the Galilee. This image shows how I had to really subdivide the stern area of the model to create the desired surface to match the existing plans:

As you get closer to finalizing the shape of the hull, you should add station, waterline, and buttock intersections to guide adjusting the control net. Where the change of hull shape is more dramatic, you will need to add more intersections, which is done under the Tools tab in the Project Tools menu group. In the second image, I have included station and buttock lines:

When fine-tuning the hull shape, you can use all three types of intersections simultaneously. Also, the program has the option of including diagonals, which are extremely useful for checking fareness. Realize that actual ships always had to deal with hogging and other unfareness in their hulls, so stressing about a few inches/centimeters of unfareness is probably not worth the trouble.

Hope these examples help!

Terry

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[Terrance Egolf]

Thanks, Maarten!

As you and I have discussed before, I have found the software to be really useful for general hull modeling—much more so than the more familiar 3D modeling software such as Solidworks, the various AutoCAD derivatives, etc., that are generally available. Adding the details to the superstructure takes more work but is doable with experience and patience.

I think you would find a market in ship modelers who want to validate old world hull plans and to create ship model structural details for 3D printing. This could be met with a middle-grade program that emphasizes hull modeling tools and de-emphasizes the stability and physics aspects. One of the biggest drawbacks of Sketchup, for example, is the fact that when you create details smaller than a certain real-world size, the CG mesh starts combining polygons and details are lost or distorted.

One feature I would like to see added to the program is the ability to insert graphics onto the surfaces of models. When I added the ship’s name and home port to the transom, I had to create each letter as an object and then position the letters as an overlay, offset from the underlying surface to avoid bleed through. Annoying, and time-consuming, but doable.

Take care!

Terry

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[Terrance Egolf]

And here is an example of the details one can model in this software. This is a combination Hyde capstan and windlass, c. 1890, that was likely carried by the ship based on contemporary photos.

I used the Clipping feature to remove the starboard bulwark so one can see under the forecastle deck.

Terry

• This reply was modified 1 month ago by Marven.

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[Terrance Egolf]

Hi jaytee.

I just installed v. 14.20 (342) of the program and tried to duplicate your problem with my own project file. I got nothing unusual. (See the attached Print pdf.) The only difference between my situation and yours is that I have moved the midpoint of the model in Project Settings about 50 feet aft of the AP. I did this so I don’t have issues trying to move control points in the Front or Aft views, but I also only get one side of the hull in these views with Both Sides turned off.

It may be an issue with your .dbm file itself. I suggest you submit it to Maarten so he can evaluate it.

Terry

DELFTship-Front-view

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[Terrance Egolf]

Welcome to the wonderful, exciting—and unpredictable—world of the Offset Surface!

I don’t pretend to understand the mathematics underlying DELFTship’s surface modeling engine. However, I have attempted to do the same operation on a similar hull as well as some experimenting and the results were less than spectacular or expected.

Any location in your model’s surface where there is a fairly significant change or discontinuity in the orientation of the surface normals, you can expect some unusual behavior of this feature. For example, I have found that along the centerline of the model (y = 0), the new offset points will tend to wrap across the centerline in the –y-direction, as if the engine is trying to accommodate the average direction of the surface normals at this discontinuity.

Elsewhere, if you have crease edges intersecting at corners , or in close proximity to each other, the resulting offset surface can be really bizarre.

Here is my example that I faced in my brigantine model. This shows the moulded hull and transom. The transom is on a separate layer.

Next, I turned off the transom so I can just offset the hull surface by 3 inches/0.25 feet (sorry, I’m in the US).

Then I offset the selected surface (I don’t think it’s necessary to actually select the surface; the dialog has you offset the selected layer.):

So you can see the nasty details where the rail line converges on the transom.

All I can tell you is that after offsetting the surface, you should expect that you will need to do some cleaning up especially around edges that change direction or shape.

Terry

PS: The program puts the offset surface in the layer at the top of your layers list for some reason, so if it doesn’t appear after commanding the offset, then look in that layer, especially if it’s turned off.

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