Re: Making Ship plans

Generally, what I do is to first draw an interesting ship shape, with a
front view, top view, and right side view.  It is typically cobbled
together from half a dozen to a dozen roughly geometric shapes; wedges,
cones, hemi-spheres, cylinders, etc., with additional small ignorable
garbage.  I then guess at the rough dimensions that seem "right", from
my rough drawing.  Then I get out my mensuration formulae; i.e. volume
of a cone is 1/3 times the area of the base times the height; volume of
a sphere is 4/3 times pi times the radius squared, etc.  With the aid of
a good calculator, I determine what the actual volume of my drawing is
in cubic meters, and divide by 13.5 to get tons.  The ratio between my
rough-guess volume and the specification volume is the cube of the ratio
between my rough-guess dimensions and the accurate dimensions that would
reflect the specifications.  I adjust my overall dimensions accordingly.

Next, I split the plan into decks, at 3m-intervals.  Sometimes a ship is
"split-level", to optimize volume for deck space.  I then make slices
through my drawings at the deck levels, and copy them to graph paper, at
the correct scaling of 1.5m squares.  I detail the interior with all the
ship's components, then draw final, detailed plans of the exterior.

Fortunately, the "rules" permit 10-20% slop in a plan, so everything
generally comes out okay.  Unfortunately, desgning ships in this manner
requires a good understanding of basic algebra and geometry.

James