I would think Freeship would be easier if you are working from a survey or table of offsets. Bearboat works much better for soft-chined designs in my experience, and I don't believe that you have nearly as much design freedom in Bearboat like you do with Freeship. IMO, Freehip is easier to use.

Perhaps something like Carlson Hulls would be better still, since it is meant to be used for generating S&G panels. I don't know if you can input offsets with Hulls, my experience with it is limited. There may also be better S&G software available that I am not aware of.

I've also done similar things with general 3D CAD software like Rhinoceros, but the learning curve may be much longer if you do not have other 3D CAD experience.

: I am going to be building a historic replica that has a sheer greater than
: the sweep possible to achieve by simply flaring the gunwales. I don't want
: to waste time trial-and-erroring the shape (because of the flare and
: gunwale angle combined), so I am thinking of using a software package to
: plan it out. This would be similar to the process of pulling panels for a
: S&G boat.

: I have some questions about Bearboat and Freeship- Do they both have this
: ability? Which is easier to use? How is the learning curve on each? How
: long can I expect this task to take as a first-time user of the program?

: Thanks for the help!

: Mike