The Orca3D Design Module brings together hull design, fairing, and basic hydrostatics in a single Rhino-based workflow, giving naval architects and marine designers the ability to move from concept development to technical evaluation without leaving the same modeling environment. It is designed for users who want both the creative freedom to shape hull geometry and the analytical feedback needed to make informed design decisions as the vessel evolves. In Orca3D, the hull is created as a NURBS surface inside Rhino, combining Rhino’s powerful surface modeling tools with Orca3D’s marine-specific capabilities. Designers can create hulls quickly using Hull Assistants, define and display key reference curves such as stations, buttocks, waterlines, diagonals, cants, and inclines, and see those sections update in real time as the hull changes. Orca3D also supports direct control of the hull’s control vertices, making it easier to refine fairness, manage important shape transitions such as the forefoot, and develop anything from simple hulls to highly complex multi-surface forms. What makes the Design Module especially powerful is its close connection between geometry and analysis. The same surface model used to design and fair the hull is also used to run basic hydrostatics and stability calculations, so there is no need to export or recreate the model in another program. As the hull evolves, Orca3D can update hydrostatic properties in real time, giving designers immediate insight into whether the design is moving toward its target displacement, buoyancy, flotation, and stability characteristics. The Design Module can compute intact hydrostatics at one or more waterlines or across multiple displacement and center-of-gravity conditions. Available calculations include overall and waterplane dimensions, volume, displacement, center of buoyancy, wetted surface, waterplane area, center of flotation, maximum sectional area, hull form coefficients, metacentric heights, righting arm data across a range of heel angles, trim angle versus heel, and the height of defined points of interest above the flotation plane. This allows designers to evaluate not only the shape of the hull, but also the core physical properties that determine how it will float and perform. Because Orca3D computes hydrostatic properties directly from the surface model using first principles, it is highly flexible in the types of geometry it can analyze. Monohulls, multihulls, and more complex floating objects can all be evaluated. The model requirements are also forgiving: the model may consist of one or more surfaces and/or meshes, the surfaces do not need to join perfectly, areas that will never become submerged do not need to be sealed, the model may be half or full, and a flat transom assumption may be used where appropriate. Overall, the Orca3D Design Module gives users a connected design environment where hull creation, fairing, section control, and hydrostatics work together. The result is a faster, more informed hull development process that helps designers create hulls that are not only visually fair and buildable, but also aligned with real hydrostatic and stability targets.
