Best boat design program?

[Biscuit1983]

Hi all,
I am working with a designer to design my aluminium range for me, but would love to learn the design part myself, I can use AutoCAD to a decent level in 2d, but wondered what your thoughts were as far as the best program to learn boat design with. Starting with planing hull pleasure and work boats, moving on to Aluminium Catamarans etc.
I have downloaded trials of MaxSurf and Rhino with Orca 3d, but i just want to commit my time to one program and wondered which one is best overall.
Looking online there are so many different ones and recommendations, from the afore mentioned 2, others mention Solidworks, AutoCAD etc etc.
Looking forward to your replies.
Thanks
Robert

 

[ridgy]

I think there is a bit more to it than drawing pictures on a computer.
I would probably start by asking the man that I was already paying.

 

[Roberto]

FWIW, I learnt using these, spline weights not sure they exist any more. "Every line you draw has a meaning, the time you take to adjust the spline, position the weights, make all measurements, cross check all crossings, etc it's all useful time for you to understand what that line represents in reality", so they said and imho very rightly so. What's very useful in electronic design is all the computations with areas, sections, volumes, etc, otherwise so time consuming when made by hand, Simpson's rule anyone?
I have not designed a boat in years (and just a few in total), should I ever do it again it would be starting on a drawing board, then digitize the offsets; beat a 150x100cm drawing board with a computer screen
Taking a midship section and fairing electronically towards some kinds of bow and stern will make things a lot quicker if you already know very well what you are doing, otherwise it won't teach you much I am afraid.

 

[Keith 66]

I use Delftship, it works by surface subdivision, basically a surface net that is warped by control points. Once your basic hull dimension parameters are in it starts from a default hull that you pull to whatever you want.
Originally released as Freeship (which is still available open source) then as Delftship which has a free version or commercial version.
It is powerful, fast & works intuitively, however there is a lot to learn much as in any design software.
The hull fairing capability options built in are good. Might be worth a play with the free version to see how you get on.