My Professional Boatbuilder overview and historical article is supposed to come out in May (with a link to the SNAME Project 114 page) and I'm working on the first draft of my WMTC technical article for their joint conference with the annual SNAME conference in November.
The PB article talks about a simple planning boat horsepower CALC engine that calculates the Crouch, Keith, Gerr-A, Gerr-B, and Wyman formulas. I will upload this example (with full source code for the CALC engine and the spreadsheet GUI) to the SNAME site soon. I want that to be online when the PB article comes out. The PB article is more of an informal, first person, persuasive one - one that should strike a chord with other old-timers who started out with punched cards. I hope it does a good job in explaining how we got to where we are and why we need to do something.
My WMTC article is more technical and detailed. It centers around three CALC engines: a Holtrop ship resistance calculation, a Hydro/Stable calculation based on the input of a GHS-type hull definition, and my HullVary calculation that takes in a GHS-type hull definition, performs a Lackenby variation that searches for a solution that keeps either draft or displacement constant, and outputs a new GHS hull definition file. Actually, this is really (finally!) a development of a SNAME paper I did in 1996 (in DOS!).
http://www.newavesys.com/hullvary.htm The WMTC paper will show how one open spreadsheet graphical user interface (GUI) can launch more than one CALC engine. The Hydro CALC engine will calculate many of the inputs needed for the Holtrop calculation, like waterline length, wetted surface, Cb, Cp, etc. and automatically feed them to the Holtrop calculation. Also, another case will show how one GUI can launch all three CALC engines and loop over different hull shape variables. One could very LWL and BWL and plot a 3D contour plot of resistance in Excel. Again, the goal is to offer naval architects a collection of CALC engines that they can mix and match together using an open spreadsheet front end. Each CALC engine will come with a simple spreadsheet front end - one that can be used as a template for customization.
The organization is still a moving target, but I see no fundamental difficulties. I'm very concerned about keeping things as simple as possible in terms of the individual pieces. I want people to think: "I can do that." I don't want them to think that it's powerful, but so complex that it just makes them want to take a nap.
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Stephen Hollister
Chief Executive Officer
New Wave Systems Inc
United States
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