Hi Xtian
many thanks for your profound reply to my indeed weakly founded posting regarding my remarks to the BOURBON DOLPHIN (BM) capsizing incident.
In defence of my probably mostly misguided conclusions I can only say that they are based on my layman's interpretation of the Norwegian Inquiry Commission's report that I referred to above by URL and that I have to admit only have found time to read superficially so far, bereft of any expert knowledge from professional experience in matters of Offshore shipping and operations, left alone of any knowledge about the standard procedures and best practices of so called rig move procedures (RPM) or mooring anchor handling of these deep-water semi-submersible structures in particular.
Hey, I'm not in that offshore business and earn my living as a humble Unix/Linux sysadmin with no affiliation to the shipping/shipbuilding industry whatsoever, and some 300 kms inland away from the shores and possible areas of any maritime activities overhere in Germany.
But as I found out meanwhile by coming past the "Ships and Oil" website, even the panel of members of said commission who I would assume to had been recruited from the maritime industry and with a long standing background expertise in that field designated in their CVs, are from a different point of view (interest) doubted to have assembled sufficient anchor-handling expertise to satisfy the needs to pass a justified verdict.
...
The Royal Commission report extended to 208 pages without appendices, and was hampered by a lack of anchor-handling expertise amongst the Commission members.
...
As for my DS drawings, I am too aware myself of their deficiencies.
And it is not at all surprising to me that they may lack any developable
multifocused conic surfaces.
But I ask you in all due respect, what kind of experience and ideas are we exchanging in this forum after all?
Are we supposed to construct and build real ships from our plans that amongst many other requirements they must meet are required to be produced in the most economic and effective fashion?
In my humble opinion I believe that the main requirement for a scale or semi-scale scratch boat modeller is to come visually as close as possible to the scaled down original vessel.
I can imagine only very few people being able to spot non developable surfaces on a model boat.
Besides the non fit for real ship construction under economic constraints hull lines that DS (or more rightly I as a mediocre user of DS) is able to produce, I dare to even claim that the meassured deviations from the designers' original lines plans if one made a model of both and towed them in comparison in a towing tank wouldn't be that significant in the end.
One also has to acknowledge that the models in the scales we model boaters usually prefer are immensely overpowered in relation to their originals due to the so called scale effects resulting from not correctly scaled down viscous effects.
So we need not fear unlike real world shipyards any penalties from their contractors should we miss a contracted max speed during sea trials.
Finally, if I take a look at some of the distributed model boat plans (e.g. that of PACIFIC BUCCANEER from the UK model plans service) which sometimes look as if drawn by hand (without the aid of rulers and templates/curves/spline) with a thick felt or marker pen, I must conclude that freely usable programmes such as DS are a huge boon to the scratch model boater who lacks any copies of lines plans which is often the case of very modern vessels such as those of the offshore fleets, and that they at least produce comparable results.
What years ago had cost days or even weeks of work, i.e. lofting hull lines by hand, is thanks to DS and similar software a matter of a few hours which could be even done by the "road worrior" on a laptop while under way.
However, I do miss the possibility in DS to insert standard graphical primitives such as circles, ellipses, parabolas etc.
That's why my bilge radii don't look that convincing when viewing the midship section.
But as said, on the model that should be hardly conspicuous.
Furthermore, are we commonly applying the plank on frame (POF) method where it is inevitable to do a fair amount of sanding and filling.
I assume an activity that we all loathe.
Btw, today I posted another
DS exercise on an AHTS hull, though this may have relatively little in common with the original vessel.
Have a nice Good Friday and Happy Easter
Ralph