Hull Design & Fairing


The design of a vessel in Orca3D begins with the hull model. Hull design is a unique combination of artistic expression and engineering analysis, combining to form a creative process to meet the aesthetic and performance requirements of the vessel.

The software that you use to transform the hull from an idea to a 3D computer model should enrich the creative process, with guidance provided by precise and detailed analyses. With Orca3D, you have complete freedom to create any type of hull, beginning with a concept and carrying through to final fairing, while ensuring that the hull meets your target hydrostatic properties.

In Orca3D, the hull is created as a NURBS surface. While Rhino provides many important surface creation and editing tools, Orca3D adds capabilities that are specific to hull design, such as:

  • Hull Assistants, for instantly creating hulls according to a range of input dimensional and shape parameters
  • Easy definition of the sections to be displayed on your hull surface; stations, buttocks, waterlines, and other planar curves. The user may specify the color of these sections, together with the layers upon which they should be placed.
  • Real-time update of the sections as the hull surface is modified
  • Real-time update of the hydrostatics as the hull surface is modified
  • Control over the shape of the forefoot of the hull, ensuring a curvature-continuous transition from the stem to the bottom
  • Easy positioning of the surface’s control vertices, either interactively, or via Orca3D’s vertex control dialog

Any type of hull and hull feature may be modeled. Hulls may be created as a single surface, or when appropriate, multiple surfaces. Tools like blending, trimming, and filleting provide tremendous capability and flexibility.

"The tools are there to help build the hull shape you want quickly and easily. That hull can be as simple as you like, or as complex as necessary and the final geometry will not only look nice on the screen but can be readily analyzed to assure that it is both ‘fair’ and buildable"

-Chuck Neville, Charles Neville Associates