Based on recent experience (building a cat) the biggest advantage of using CAD software is the ability to make patterns to build the boat by. A good CAD/CAM program can output paper patterns to cut things out.

Most of the calculations provided by commercial design software can be duplicated by an EXCEL spreadsheet and a couple of books on the subject. The advantage of doing it this way is you will have a better understanding of what you are doing.

If you already have EXCEL or it's equivalent, you can start cheap by using equations and designing the hulls numerically. You can then draw the design in section views using the plot capability. For better drawings or 3-d pictures most CAD programs will accept numerical tables as inputs. In analysis it is the numbers that matter, the drawings are for presentations and construction.


None of the commercial PC based programs, that I have seen, even approach industry state of the art. If you look around you may find surplus UNIX workstations loaded with obsolete all in one (CAD, CFD, Dynamics, etc) software. I bought an old APOLLO computer like that once. Be very very careful about advanced software. Make sure a license is included. Companies control it as "Trade Secrets" and Governments control it as tools for designing military hardware.

Good luck and have fun