Rhinoceros

I have known the developers of Orca3d for close to 30 years. What is important is not the long link that I have to them, but the vast amount of experience they have had developing software for Naval Architects and Yacht Designers. This group was among the first to appreciate the advantages of NURBS in the development of fair hulls. They did so in technical papers on the subject as well as in the software they developed. And it was all a period where others were still using less controllable objects. Unfortunately their first software and the sophisticated hardware (for the day) that it took to run were much more expensive than this then young Naval Architect could afford. Though even in those days I knew them and their work I grudgingly purchase a significantly less expensive well known software. And I grew to hate it. I never felt like I was able to craft a hull to meet my planned specifications. What I did do was get tired of trying when I had reached a point of 'good enough'. Luckily after only a few years of frustration the cost of software and the hardware had come down. I jumped to their software and have used it moving along with them as new platforms and versions developed. Building on top of Rhino has allowed them to create a whole new generation of hull development tools including the best features of the past along with a seeming endless array of new possibilities. It has also allowed them to focus even more on the Naval Architectural needs of their clients. Orca3d currently offers a great number of improvements and utility features over products previously available and it grows with each new release. 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. You can also evaluate the results with their suite of performance, weight, stability and other tools. I have found that even outside of boat design they have provided many new and useful controls that add to Rhino's overall functionality on all kind of projects. Beyond the tools themselves the developers at Orca3d have always offered great support whether it's understanding the program itself or helping you to figure out the best way to perform a necessary task. And that is probably the bottom line. Orca3d is software designed for Naval Architects and yacht designers by a group of practicing Naval Architects. They understand not just how to write software code, but what tasks need to be done and how a design professional will likely want to do them. Often that kind of experience and sensibility is a rare thing. Chuck Neville Charles Neville Associates Centreville, MD

Orca3D has been my hydrostatics program of choice since its inception and I use it along with Rhino3D for all my marine design. You will find that it is equally accurate for craft as small as 36 inches and as long as 72 feet (the limit of my experience), from skinny canoes and catamarans to powerboats and sailboats with more beam. As well as being impressed with the software, I have to congratulate Bruce and the team on their timely response to requests for enhancements and bug fixes. There are open to suggestions, have added many of the requested features and solved most of my problems. The hydrostatics have been tested here against FastShip and for consistency when switching units (I use both imperial and metric) and there are no flaws that I have found. My most-used features, beyond basic hydrostatics, are the float function to set the hull and appendages to a given displacement and CG, corner wrap for smooth wraps at the forefoot, and dynamic sections to help with fairing or hull matching. I have floated some very complex geometry and although those surfaces take some time to calculate, the results are still accurate.

I have been using orca almost from the beginning when the wip versions came out. I think it is an outstanding plug-in for any yacht designer. I do very much appreciate the cost and weight module (which saves creating several separate spreadsheets on the side). I also like the functionality and user friendliness. We design mainly catamarans and trimarans and the performance predictions do not exactly apply to our hulls, but combined with our experience factor, it is still very useful and accurate. I would also like to compliment tech support; anytime I needed their help they were quick and accurate. I would like to thank Bruce Hays and his team for creating this program and continuing to improve it.

Having used Orca3D to solve a difficult reverse engineering project, I was already pretty happy. Now, having used all of the features on new projects, I have to make my rating 5 (*****) stars, without question. Each time I go deeper into Orca3D's feature set, I move farther from my old tools. One example: The weight tracking tools are not a new idea, but work really well. Keep it coming!

We have used the Hull Design and Intact Stability features of the new Orca3D and can recommend them. The hull assistants have real time visual feedback for all input parameters, which is a huge time saver compared to RhinoMarine. The intact hydrostatics in Orca3D have been thoroughly improved over RhinoMarine with the introduction of Design Condition and multiple free trimming heeled resultant water planes. As an avid user of FastShip, we also recognize the usefulness of Orca3D Move features for precise control and very fast cross section updates. This feature was a great time saver in a recent reverse engineering project we recently performed. Without Orca3D, shifting between the flexibility of Rhino and the precision of an external hull shaper was tedious. With Orca3D, we could reach the entire toolbox of Rhino, like Sweep2 or NetworkSurf. Orca3D Move made tweaking this easy and precise. Then with PointCloudSection and Orca3D Sections we could quickly compare the candidate to the target, in real time. The great viewport display options of Rhino came in handy in judging the surface compared to millions of data points. The last stage was a combination of fairing the sections and surface while running PointDeviation in real time. We are quite satisfied with the outcome. We look forward to exploring the resistance models available and to the new developments coming in future releases. Keep up the good work! To know more, visit our site: <a ref=http://www.styacht.com/indexRIB.html> www.STYacht.com</a>

If you are a marine user of Rhino then Orca3D will make you life easier. Orca3D is intuitive with helpful video tutorials, the tutorials got us up to speed quickly. We find its many features automates and keep our work flowing smoothly. It makes quick work of Hydrostatics and Stability calculations giving us logical choices with radio buttons and data entry fields for the variations needed, the reports are clean and easy to read. Some of our clients still need paper 2D line drawings and Offsets, again Orca3D quickly creates Stations, Waterlines, and Buttocks planes to give a nice clean. product for our customers. 5 stars from this office.

Orca3D is certainly the perfect companion for Rhinoceros, adding new commands and features that allow you to properly and efficiently deal with virtually any waterborne project. Hydrostatics & Stability (H&S) built-in code is very robust, accurate and fast. You can analyze virtually any type of hull geometry, no matter whether it is a monohull or multihull of any kind, with a full degree of confidence on the results obtained. Orca3D’s different approach for processing Hydrostatic & Stability calculations makes it quite versatile and immune to usual 3Dmodel flaws, i.e. when you finish with naked edges below waterline, or singular points (singularities) and so, allowing you to override this problem and get H&S calculations for your model, even when the hull is not perfectly modeled. Moreover (a detail that it is usually paid not enough attention) H&S reports are very well designed and the information dumped in them very well organized. Making them very easy to read and follow, to let you quickly find the information you’re looking for. Another interesting new feature in Orca3D is the Real Time Hydrostatics, that let you keep track of main hydrostatic parameters (and its evolution) while editing hull's affected surfaces. But with Orca3D you’re not only limited to Hydrostatics & Stability calculations. There are more modules/features available in Orca3D, each of them specifically designed to assist you with the usual tasks at different stages of the project. For example: If you don’t consider yourself a true expert in 3D modeling, but you need to come up with a hull model... don’t worry!, the built-in Hull Assistants will let you overtake this handicap, allowing you to quickly come up with a well shaped hull (ship, planning and sailing) and with just the input of some of its main generic geometrical parameters. You can also pre-visualize hull hydrostatics while defining the main parameters in order to be sure that when the hull geometry is created, it will comply with the desired characteristics Real time Sections is perhaps one of the best/more useful tools available today, to assist you with the modeling process of any Rhino complex free form shape. This is certainly one of my favorite modeling tools, since you can define in a fast, clear and easy manner, as many sections as you want on the surfaces that you want to edit/modify; and grouped according to its normal vector’s orientation, which can be virtually oriented in any direction: Sections, Waterlines, Buttocks and more… The ability to assign different colors to the sections, greatly enhance its visualization/identification. This is certainly a very useful tool, not only to assist you with the 3D Modeling process of any form, because it provides you with a drastic enhancement on surface’s visualization in the way that Naval Architects want/like to see and analyze them, but also if you also have to produce accurate NC patterns out of your 3D model for moulds/parts manufacturing, or if you have to deal with a (usually difficult and time consuming) reverse engineering project, that is, to produce/input a 3D Model of a hull starting from just a poorly printed “lines drawing”, or an “offsets table” of any – questionable - source. Another tool worth to mention is Orca3D’s Weight and Cost Calculator. This tool lets you overtake current Rhino’s missing “mass” calculations, allowing you to either define “Mass and/or Cost Densities” on current Rhino entities (points, lines, surfaces/polysurfaces and volumes) or assign a specific weight/cost directly on them. You can also let Orca3D compute entity’s CG from its own geometry, same way as Rhino does with its surfaces and volumes, or otherwise assign it to a pre-defined point in World Coordinates. This is certainly another very interesting and flexible tool when you have to work with weight/cost computations, either at an early design stage, when there are more things not yet defined than the ones already established, or when already at vessel’s construction stage, to keep track on the weights that are being added or deleted. Remember, Weight engineering is a good/proper & highly recommended practice that sometimes, and more often when dealing with small projects (either in size or budget), it is not paid enough attention or simply neglected. Failure to achieve a good weight estimation & control can finish in a complete project failure, and with drastic consequences to all parties involved in it. Orca3D provides you with an excellent, yet simple, tool/resource to properly deal with this important aspect of any project. To finish, a good software for Naval Architecture wouldn’t be complete without a resource for Powering calculations. Orca3D already includes two of the most popular and well proven Resistance/Powering Prediction methods. The Holtrop method for displacement hulls/ship forms and the Savitsky method (long form) for planning hull forms. Of course, if you need to perform a resistance analysis with a prediction method not yet implemented here, Orca3D & Rhinoceros tools will greatly help you to easy the – sometimes cumbersome & time consuming - process to come up with all those, usually “intricate” or hard to compute, hull parameters (wetted surface, entrance angles, wetted girth, weight/displacement for any condition, CB or CG position, etc., etc.) that you need to deal with any other prediction method. Of course, there are some more good features and functions available in Orca3D, but given the limited space for this review (which has already gone longer than I expected...), I invite you to explore for yourself. Do not hesitate to download the software and try it. Last, but not least… and you can truly prove this for yourself. Perhaps the best thing behind Orca3D it is not only the code, its robustness and features described above…, but its people. You will find/meet a highly qualified group of experts, Naval Architects that speak the same “language” as you, willing to properly assist you when you need support.