The blocks in the system are used to organize the elements of the model. There are no strict requirements for the structure of the project blocks. You can use any convenient project block structure. Developing an easy-to-use project block structure is important for sharing by multiple designers. The structure and names of the blocks should be clear to all designers. It is advisable to use a similar block structure from project to project. The correct structure of the project is especially important at the stage of detailed design, when the ship surface is overgrown with a large number of additional details.
Here you can find more about Shape Maker mathematical model.
The Shape Maker has a fairly flexible block tree structure. The block can be easily moved from one place to another in the tree. This affects only the visibility of the elements belonging to this block. The geometry of the elements themselves and all topological connections do not change. This makes it possible to make almost any block structure and easily change it if necessary. Additionally, you can include external blocks from other projects for reference and visualization, and import blocks from other projects.
Based on our own experience, if several people are involved in the process of modeling ship surfaces, the issue of the correct organization of the project becomes even more urgent. It takes much less time to deal with the information storage system if this system is the same for all projects.
A very convenient structure for storing project data was developed by Salt Ship Design. The project database stores the surface model and all its changes that took place with the project. Every significant surface change is saved in a new body block. It looks something like this:
Each new significant changes or revision is copied into a new hull. Thus, all changes in the project life cycle are tracked. This structure can be used by many design organizations as a basic one.
As a rule, in the design process, various versions of the hull shape are worked out. Saving all changes in the model allows you to use one or another version for a new project To do this, just find a suitable block and copy it into a new project. Especially at the technical proposal stages of a new project, when the design contract has not yet been signed, this approach allows us to quickly offer the customer a fully functional version of the hull surface. More time is spent if you do it from scratch.
This structure works well if there are no topological references between different versions of the enclosures. The absence of topological links allows the creation of easily modifiable models in this case.
The ability to make textual comments on the hull block allows you to exchange the necessary information between different project participants and save a description of the history of changes made to the project.
Even in a large tree of blocks, it is quite easy to navigate using the mode of inclusion of all blocks of the project and the mode of the entry point into the block. When setting an entry point to a block, the system seems to forget about all other blocks of the project and only shows the elements that are in this blocks and in child blocks. This also allows you to significantly speed up the visualization and search for objects in case the project contains a large amount of information.
