Page 31: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (October 2005)

October 2005 31

Autoship has been given a major upgrade, with new design aids in the new version Autoship 9.

Feature Patches Autoship 9 intro- duces a system of introducing local shape control on a surface without deal- ing with unwanted control points. A

Feature Patch has default or user- defined boundaries.

It can be shaped by one or more con- trol points.

The patch blends at its edges to the shape of the parent surface. The blend transition may be positional, tangent or curvature continuous.

When a surface has a patch applied, it is still fully editable using only the orig- inal control points. When the parent sur- face shape is changed the patch moves with the change, retaining its own shape.

Patches may overlap and be nested.

Edge Mate Ship hulls and superstruc- tures are often designed as several sur- faces that must be joined at their edges without leaving gaps. The Edge Mate facility allows all or part of one surface to be matched exactly to all or part of another surface's edge with full control over the shape of the transition. The user can choose positional, tangent or curva- ture continuity from one surface to the other. The portion of the surface used to make the transition is user-controlled.

When only part of an edge is mated, there is full user control over the transi- tion area at the end of the mate. Any or all of the edges of a surface can be mated.

Project Integration and Export

Surfaces which incorporate Feature

Patches and/or Edge Mates are fully integrated into their Autoship project.

They are contoured, intersected, trimmed, meshed and rendered just as any other surface.

They also export exactly via IGES, making transfer of designs from

Autoship to other programs simple and accurate.

In addition to these major tool addi- tions, Autoship 9 incorporates other sig- nificant advances. For more informa- tion,

Circle 7 on Reader Service Card

Circle 237 on Reader Service Card

Circle 263 on Reader Service Card

Autoship Systems Develops Autoship 9

Marine Design

Curvature-continuous blend between flat of side and bow surfaces.

A rendering of the boat hull, showing the spray rail introduced as a feature patch.

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