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Any Delftship users here?


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I'd like to get help at the official Delftship forum:
https://forum.delftship.net/

but it seems broken and/or unused... I can't successfully post there, and most topics and responses are at least weeks old...

Pat M.

Matthews Model Marine

Model FUNCTION as well as FORM.

Get your boats wet!

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Pat, I will be interested to see if what comes of this. 

Are you aware of the Delftship tutorial elsewhere in this site?  Search 'DELFTSHIP', using filter 'in titles only' and you will find a number of threads.

Apologies if you already know this 🤐

🌻

STAY SAFE

 

A model shipwright and an amateur historian are heads & tails of the same coin

current builds:

HMS Berwick 1775, 1/192 scratchbuild; a Slade 74 in the Navy Board style

Mediator sloop, 1/48 - an 18th century transport scratchbuild 

French longboat - CAF - 1/48, on hold

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Thanks and yes, but a lot of material is a bit dated. I don't see much recent activity, makes me wonder if this is still a popular tool?

I sent an email to DS HQ asking why their forum is broken... no answer yet.

 

But I'm wrestling with topics like:
- The developed hull shape does NOT go through the control points, which are input from the original lines drawing... they just INFLUENCE the shape. Fine except it's not, because the developed form no longer matches the original. There must be a work flow that gets the generated shape closer to the desired form;

- Deck camber- the "Extrude Curved" tool is supposed to generate a nicely cambered deck, except it doesn't... it's generating garbage for me;

- You can pop 160 euro for the Pro version which will output the surfaces in IGES format. But what format? A faceted mesh, or a proper smooth surface?  The available exports in the free version just give the faceted mesh, which looks terrible when imported into, say, Fusion360 (as seen below). Unusable. 

The whole reason for me exploring Delftship is its better ability to generate hull shapes, compared to the buggy tools in F360, whadda headache (that area around the sternpost/stern counter is a BEAR to loft). Maybe I should pop for Rhino, $995 ouch.

 

20221026d.JPG

Edited by Patrick Matthews

Pat M.

Matthews Model Marine

Model FUNCTION as well as FORM.

Get your boats wet!

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I did receive replies from DS HQ:

1. The forum is not broken, new posts are moderated. But still, not so much recent activity, which is curious.

2. Hull surfaces exported as IGES are "smooth parametric surfaces, but please keep in mind that the exported hull can consist of many (sometimes hundreds) of such surfaces." So it's not clear yet whether that would look like a broken mosaic when imported into my CAD.

Pat M.

Matthews Model Marine

Model FUNCTION as well as FORM.

Get your boats wet!

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So here's the second most important thing for DS users to know:

Lines imported from a lines drawing DO NOT create a hull true to those lines!

 

First most important? It can be fixed.

 

As above: "The developed hull shape does NOT go through the control points, which are input from the original lines drawing... they just INFLUENCE the shape. Fine except it's not, because the developed form no longer matches the original. There must be a work flow that gets the generated shape closer to the desired form."

Indeed the DS developed hull cuts corners, it's always well to the inside (concave side) of input curves, except at the "corners". 

 

Imagine you have a magnetic rubbery sheet pegged by its 4 corners to the floor, exactly where you want the corners. 

Then you hang a bunch of magnets from the ceiling, and each magnet is hanging exactly where you want the sheet to stretch and rise to, defining some sort of hill (I'm picturing Richard Dreyfuss building Devil's Tower in his living room).

But while the sheet is stretchy, it's not THAT stretchy, and it hovers over the floor but doesn't quite reach the magnets. Oops. That's what we have in DS, with the developed hull not reaching the input points.

 

How to fix it? Just keep raising the magnets until the sheet rises to the proper place.

In DS, I did this, though there may be more efficient ways:

1. Import the control points once to define the control mesh and its resultant malformed hull.

2. Import the control points a second time as "marker curves". Markers are static curves, immutable, and they serve as references of where the original control points and desired hull sections are. 

3. In an end view, compare the developed body sections (which are wrong) to the desired shape shown by the marker curves. Now start moving control points sideways or vertically to slowly pull the body sections towards their markers. Yes, this modifies the original control points and mesh! 

4. Note that this is iterative... moving one point affects the adjacent surface faces, so you'll need to sweep back and forth over all the points to get everything close.

5. Also note that the four edges of your rubber sheet between the corner pegs were also pulled off the floor when the magnets started lifting the center. Same thing in DS- the edges at deck edge and keel also have moved out of place. So the adjusting exercise needs to address those too.

 

I did this for my tugboat hull, and while it still needs some adjustment, it's much closer to the desired shape now (below).

 

More: While you can get close by doing this, you can also turn on curvature displays to better smooth (fair) your new shapes. I haven't done this yet, may not need to for my present purposes.

More #2: The Pro version of DS has an "automatic fairing" tool. I'm not sure how this works, but it could be of help.

20221027b.thumb.JPG.0c4229a87c8c2b3df33cf222ef3cd5de.JPG

Edited by Patrick Matthews

Pat M.

Matthews Model Marine

Model FUNCTION as well as FORM.

Get your boats wet!

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Here's an end view showing some of these features:

White: Original control points and the control mesh with its straight Tinkertoy connectors. The control points lay on the proper body sections from the lines drawing.

Green: Body sections cut through the DS developed hull surface... they miss by a lot. Even at the deck edges.

Pink: Nice curvy marker curves that DS draws for the second import of the original control points. These markers are the target, I need to move the green lines to match them.

 

To move any one point: Click on it, and you can enter new numbers or use the little arrow to move the point by set increments, very handy. Move each and every one this way to drag the developed sections around.

20221027c.thumb.JPG.b1750bd6573a02479e1ac8a41b7ebd39.JPG

Pat M.

Matthews Model Marine

Model FUNCTION as well as FORM.

Get your boats wet!

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HI Pat.

 

I suggest checking out my "Galilee" topic. Spent nearly seven years reconstructing the historic brigantine's hull and deck furniture in DELFTship.

 

The DELFTship forum is alive but grossly underused. The company itself favors the professional and serious ship/boatbuilders, and only throws a bone occasionally to we modelers and maritime historians.

 

I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. Feel free to PM me as well.

 

Terry

Edited by CDR_Ret
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Thanks!
My biggest question regards the IGES output, only available in the Pro version. They told me it can output many, maybe hundreds, of surface patches, which would likely look like a mosaic when used in other CAD software. But if, for example on my tug hull, it comes out as smooth single patch for the main surface, that would be fine.
They sent me a sample IGES file, but it was of a simple developable hull, so not really a test of this feature. The transom (port) was fractured, but I stitched the surface patches in Fusion360, and it all merged nicely (stbd). 

 

Test1.JPG

Edited by Patrick Matthews

Pat M.

Matthews Model Marine

Model FUNCTION as well as FORM.

Get your boats wet!

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Pat,

 

What is driving your requirement to obtain an IGES file?

 

To get around the need for the DELFTship Pro version, you might consider saving your model as a DXF 3D file, available in the DELFTship Free program. (Note that this operation saves all the geometry in the model, both visible and hidden, and on all the layers.) Then you can import the DXF into Fusion360, and then export to IGES. I don't have the ability to do that myself but, based on various websites, it sounds like it would be a doable path. There may be other paths available using browser-based file converters. However, there may be some file quality and security issues using those.

 

Just remember that DELFTship uses a surface modeling technique called subdivision surfaces (a type of spline-surface). The control net creates the surface in 3D space using mathematical algorithms, which results in a surface curvature that is a function of edge density, type of edges, control point density, and the shape of the control net. The program references these surfaces (not the control net) when exporting them to other file formats. It seems like many 3D CAD software have tightened up their file import/export capabilities in recent years. DELFTship and Sketchup are no exceptions.

 

Not sure that explanation helped, but it may adjust your expectations for this software!

 

Enjoyed visiting your website.👍

 

Terry

 

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Nope on the 3D DXF. That results in a mesh not unlike an STL- points joined by straight connectors, resulting in a faceted surface. It is NOT a smooth curvy surface. 

The IGES export is smooth & curvy... I just don't know if the entire side of my hull with its compound curved surfaces comes out in one patch or not.  

 

Why do this? Because while Fusion 360 can be a pain for creating lofted hulls, it's a champ for making all the other details. And it has history, which is priceless in large complex models. So if I can make a correct hull in DS, I'd just export the shape to F360. But as I detail above, that subdivided surface from DS using a control mesh is WRONG, and  it requires a lot of tweaking to correct.  

Now, with much gnashing of teeth, I have been able to create a reasonable lofted hull in F360... so it's just a matter of which path is less headache.

My F360 generated hull:

20221029a.JPG

Pat M.

Matthews Model Marine

Model FUNCTION as well as FORM.

Get your boats wet!

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Pat,

 

I guess I must have worded my question wrong, or at least it was unclear. Sorry about that. Ultimately, do you want to create 2D lines plans or produce files that can be 3D printed?

 

If the former, then DELFTship Free has everything you will need for lines plans. You can create stations, waterlines, buttocks, and diagonals at any spacing you wish, The Control Net can produce as smooth a surface as desired and the surface tools can identify surface irregularities, as you mentioned in an earlier post.

 

The choice of dimensional precision permits you to create very tiny and precise objects as well. My brigantine model has objects that are accurately dimensioned down to small fractions of an inch, though one would never be able to model those in the real world at a reasonable scale. Here are several views of Galilee in DELFTship Free showing the details possible. Exported images here are rendered within DELFTship at originally 3000 px wide. The only details I omitted in the model were the beaded sheathing planks on the cabin sides simply because that would have been too tedious for what you would get out of the work.

Galilee-Forward.thumb.jpg.ccd352748a0572eeffd5f1a98f6d096e.jpg

Forward deck area of the brigantine Galilee as she was in 1907 while under charter to the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution, Washington, D.C. Modeled in DELFTship Free.

Galilee-Aft.thumb.jpg.33a83aa6a89b3790577a8ba016fc7b32.jpg

Galilee aft view. Modeled in DELFTship Free. The outboard rods supporting the davits are 3/4-inch diameter by scale.

 

Galilee-Details.thumb.jpg.d9d50de07343d174a7666fb0f506828b.jpg

Details of hardware in Galilee modeled in DELFTship Free. Belaying pins, eyebolts, ring bolts, all were created to scale.

 

2D lines plans can be produced right within the program, suitable for desktop or roll printers. To reduce the clutter, you have to select only the layers intended to be printed in the Lines Plans via the Edit menu of the Layers group in the Home Ribbon.

 

The major downside to DELFTship is that you can't produce photorealistic images of the model which might be useful for a client. Also, DELFTship does not have a lot of tools for modeling small detailed objects that other programs like Fusion360, FreeCAD, Blender, or Sketchup may have. But with patience and ingenuity, you can create just about anything. I haven't tried anything organic yet, but others have.

 

Is this what you are trying to achieve?

 

Terry

Edited by CDR_Ret
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Very nice & complete work!

Yes, my goal is to document vessels in a manner useful for modelers. I'm not creating 3d printable files. But my documentation includes 2d drawings as well as a 3d CAD model. The cad model can be used directly, or examined to better understand my abbreviated 2d work 

I do like the DS lines drawings, and that's another area that F360 erects unnecessary roadblocks... But I'm finding ways to work around those too. See my Fire Fighter model for example:

https://grabcad.com/library/fire-fighter-fireboat-1

 

 

 

FF_LinesTN.JPG

FF_ProfileTN.JPG

Pat M.

Matthews Model Marine

Model FUNCTION as well as FORM.

Get your boats wet!

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Very nice, Pat!

 

I built Revell's model of the Fire Fighter as a kid. I have no idea how accurate that was.

 

Anyway, it seems that trying to export files out of DELFTship will be problematic. And after trying to export DXF 3D geometry into 3rd-party file converters this weekend, it almost looks like the function is broken in the Free version. I only get the crease edges. No surfaces at all.

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