In Reply to MauganH17,

Wow, taking a shot at Bill Roberts. Not something I would be comfortable doing.

You can't crunch the type of numbers Bill is talking about with CAD. In aerospace (my field), the CAD stuff is at the end of the analysis-design cycle, and I suspect in high performance hull design it is the same. The CAD may tell you what you've got, but it certainly doesn't get you there. During the iteration process you can import the CAD model into a CFD code to "test" what you've ended up with - a digital wind tunnel (or tow tank in this case). I always got a kick out of the assembly technicians in the Grumman F-14 facility who would say "what do we need these dumb aerospace engineers for? We can build this plane just fine without them". My reply was "But where would you get the parts from?"

I think I would listen to whatever Bill has to say - he's been analyzing, designing and building very successful platforms for many years.

Steve