Attend an introductory Orca3D webinar on May 21st and save 20%!

We will be holding an introductory webinar entitled "Extending Rhino's capabilities for the naval architect" on Thursday, May 21st at 0900 Eastern Daylight Time (1300 UTC, 1500 Central European Time). The webinar will feature a live presentation of the four functional areas of Orca3D: Hull Design & Fairing, Intact Hydrostatics & Stability, Resistance & Power Prediction, and Weight & Cost Tracking, and will last for approximately 40 minutes.

Attendees will receive a coupon code good for a 20% discount on Orca3D purchases made within 30 days of the webinar. To register for the webinar, visit the webinar page on our website, where you'll also find links to recorded versions of previous webinars: http://www.orca3d.com/support/support_webinars.htm

See you there!

Interesting capsize and flotation study using Orca3D

Scott Graham of Graham Marine, Inc. is restoring a wooden Lightning class sailboat, and wanted to look at various options for adding flotation to make it easier to recover from a capsize. After building a detailed model in Rhino that accounts for the thickness of all of the parts, he looked at adding watertight bulkheads, airbags in various locations, and foam under the gunwales. Using Orca3D, he computed righting arm curves that include the effect of the crew and the buoyant mast for each configuration. Click here to see his results, as presented on the Lightning Class website.

Webinar "Speed/Power Analysis with Orca3D" available on Orca3D.com

Webinar "Speed/Power Analysis with Orca3D" available on Orca3D.com

We've added a webinar to our website, entitled "Speed/Power Analysis with Orca3D". This 30-minute recording of a recent live presentation provides background on the resistance methods in Orca3D, and demonstrates their use. Click here to go to the webinar page on Orca3D.com.

Webinar "Extending Rhino's capabilities for the naval architect" available on Orca3D.com

We've added a webinar to our website, entitled "Extending Rhino's capabilities for the naval architect". This 35-minute recording of a recent live presentation demonstrates the main features of each of the four functional areas of Orca3D: Hull Design & Fairing, Intact Hydrostatics & Stability, Resistance & Power Prediction, and Weight & Cost Tracking. Click here to go to the webinar page on Orca3D.com.

Special discounts for Westlawn and Landing School Students

We've just announced special discounts on Orca3D/Rhino bundles for Westlawn and Landing School students. Active students from either school receive a 10% discount when purchasing Orca3D together with Rhino or the Rhino/Flamingo/Penguin/Bongo bundle. Click here for details.

November Upgrade discounts extended

Due to the Thanksgiving holiday in the US during the last week of November, some customers in missed the opportunity to take advantage of the Orca3D competitive upgrade discounts. The deadline has now been extended to Monday, December 8th. If you currently use FastShip, FastYacht, or RhinoMarine 4, you can save up to 50%. Please visit www.orca3d.com/order/order.htm for details.

Make it easier to see the control points on a surface

While working in Rhino, sometimes the view can become cluttered, making it difficult to see the part of the model that you're interested in. This can be particularly true when fairing a hull; for example, when working in the Right or Bodyplan viewport and moving control points in the bow, the aft portion of the hull clutters the view.

One solution to this is Rhino's clippingplane command. A clipping plane is a plane in space beyond which any geometry becomes invisible. Clipping planes are specific to a viewport, and any viewport may have multiple clipping planes.

To create a clipping plane, type the command clippingplane into Rhino's command line (it's not available in a menu, but there is an icon on the Viewport Layout toolbar). Click in the viewport in which you want the clipping plane to apply, and then draw a rectangle (the size of the rectangle doesn't matter; the clipping plane is infinite). Now, drag the clipping plane in one of the other viewports to change its location. The clipping plane has a pointer that shows the direction of the visible geometry. Use the flip command to turn it around. By turning on the control points of the clipping plane, you can rotate the plane, and drag it to dynamically clip the view.

A second option to make it easier to see your control net is the cullcontrolpolygon command (the icon is available on the Point Editing toolbar). This command, which is a toggle, hides any portion of the control polygon (the lines connecting the control points) that are in the background. This is easily seen in the Perspective viewport as you rotate the hull with the Orca control points on.

Rhino's Right view will now show just the aft portion of the control polygon (assuming forward is negative X in your model), and the Bodyplan view of the Orca3D viewports will show the forward portion of the control polygon.