Ship AreasCurve

Description
Plot the transversal areas curve

Design draft transversal areas curve.

The transversal areas curve is a really valuable information in the first stages of a ship design, as long as it provides an idea of the ship shape and volume distribution.

Special attention is always paid on the eventual shoulders of the curve, which would indicate large ship resistance (less efficiency in other words).

Usage
In order to compute the transversal areas curve, select a Ship instance (see Ships creation), and invoke the Areas curve tool.

The task dialogue and a free-surface annotation at 3D view will shown. The annotation will removed when you close the tool, so don't worry about this.

By default the design ship draft is selected, as well as a null trim angle. You are free to edit both fields. Each time the draft and trim data is edited some basic information regarding the submerged part of the ship is updated in the text box.

You can also select the number of transversal sections to be considered. The larger the number of sections the better resolution will be obtained, at a cost of larger computation time lapses.

When you press the button, the computation starts. It may hang FreeCAD for a while, be patient. When the computation finish a plot of the transversal areas curve is created, as well as a spreadsheet with that information.

Tutorials

 * FreeCAD-Ship s60 tutorial
 * FreeCAD-Ship s60 tutorial (II)