Hi again,

I was just curious what your background is? At least regarding the extent of CAD software. Are you a CAD software developer? Because I (as apparently are many others)am interested to know how to scale a lofted hull or structure, (such as the max beam of a hull) while keeping all the other parameters constant - or at least not affected too adversely.
I am an engineer (and have been for over 20 years) and have so far mastered CADAM, CATIA, SDRC, PRO-E, Inventor, Mechanical Desktop and a few others that I might have forgotten, and have not found an easy way to do this (yet). I suppose you could place a variable parameter value on the "bulkhead" beam(or whatever you are using for the lofted solid) so that you could vary it external to the software. It would have to vary over some function of waterline length so that you still maintained a smooth transition from bow to stern. Then it would have to do that while still achieving the target prismatic coefficient, rocker, etc. I guess it's do-able but I've never tried it (only becaue it's easier to have a table driven set of parameters and have this generated from a spreadhseet, or even the ASCII output of a code. (But I guess you would prefer to call that an abacus...)

If you want, you can reply offline so this doesn't seem as hostile as it does reading it on the forum - which happens too often! Or better yet, E-mail me and we can talk by phone.

Steve Bellavia