Solid Model CAD Tool

Chauncey Creek Boats is designing all their boats using the very latest technology. The design tool Solidworks is giving us advantages in the design process that no other builder can offer. For example, it will give us the ability to collaborate with prospective customer’s face to face using a lap top computer or remotely using e-mail or the internet, customers may download the CAD models to their own PC’s. We can design your boat in 3D CAD based on your exact specifications, we can make changes on the fly, galley up, galley down, second stateroom, and you can view these files and see how the boat will look prior to construction. This process decreases lead times by as much as 50 percent and allows us to build a semi-custom boat at production boat costs.

Each boat is custom built to meet the needs of the individual client. We want to know how tall you are, if the bunk is roomy enough, if the head works for you and if the galley and saloon meet your needs. That is what building a custom boat is all about!

The article below describes the advantages and benefits of design and engineering with SolidWorks.

By Patricia Resende

Back in the day, engineers used pen and paper and trial and error to design, build and test devices and machinery. Now they use a keyboard and a mouse.

SolidWorks Corp., a provider of computer aided design (CAD) software in Concord, has proved that its technology can save time, money and productivity yet again.

When the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Falmouth was tasked with designing and developing a submersible vehicle to move through part of a 105-mile long, 1,600-foot deep aqueduct below the Hudson River, its engineers used SolidWorks 3-D design software and CosmosWorks analysis software.

The Delaware Aqueduct is a 13.5-foot diameter tunnel built between 1939 and 1945 that provides half the typical daily water supply to New York’s more than 8 million residents. The structure is leaking between 10 and 36 million gallons of water each day and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection wants to stop it.

The DEP, however, needed someone or something to find the leaks and assess the damage before working on plans to fix it. The only way for officials to assess the leaks would be to shut off the water and walk through the tunnel. The water pressure, however, may be the only thing keeping the tunnel from collapsing, so it was not an option.

Officials called on Woods Hole engineers to develop a prototype of an autonomous vehicle to run through the aqueduct, which runs anywhere from 600 to 2,400 feet below ground.

To develop the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), engineers used SolidWorks design and analysis software sold to them by R&D Technologies of North Kingstown, R.I., a SolidWorks reseller.Andy Coutu, president of R&D, said designing in 3-D allows faster and more accurate design.

“In the old days you had to build and test and throw (the models) away, and now you can do it in a virtual reality,” he said. “As you are designing you are getting all of the feedback.”

CosmosWorks, a 3-D design analysis application, shows users how the design will react under certain conditions.

In the case of Woods Hole, engineers could analyze the prototype under different stimulated water pressures to determine leakage.

“Everything you are dealing with has all kinds of properties,” Coutu said.

“Whatever you manufacture — a car, airplane, or laptop — you have to make sure it will work under certain operating conditions,” said Suchit Jain, vice president of analysis products for SolidWorks. “A lot of times, companies will do physical testing and simulate conditions in the lab,” he added. “But with the software we allow everyone to do that on a computer and do design changes without doing things like cut metal.”

With the Woods Hole project, the analysis software allows users to apply pressure and place any object underwater at any depth to test whether it will withstand the pressure.

“You can then make design changes on the fly,” Jain added.

Making a change after a product is already manufactured is much more expensive and difficult than pressing a button on the keyboard and making a change on a CAD model.

It took nearly four years to design and build the AUV — dubbed ULIISYS for Underwater Linear Infrastructure Investigation System. Design was based on the institution’s Remote Environmental Monitoring Units (REMUS), which Woods Hole had designed and tested for the U.S. Navy. The ULIISYS device had a first test in 2002 and a year later was lowered into the tunnel.

Along its journey, the vehicle took more than 160,000 digital images and recorded conditions using pressure sensors, velocity sensors and hydrophones, according the NYC DEP. More than 600 gigabytes of data was collected and stored on 150 DVDs for the DEP to view.

“The ability to create a 3-D model, run an analysis, then get the data back into the modeling program without re-entering data saves us valuable time,” said Ben Allen, a senior engineer in Woods Hole’s Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering Department. “We use (CosmosWorks) to iterate on the design of a specific part to minimize material use and precisely adjust component deflections for assemblies to fit together appropriately.”

The voyage may be over, but the team at Woods Hole continues to develop the ULIISYS using SolidWorks’ applications.

Patricia Resende is a freelance writer based in Bristol, R.I.