: You can sorta do that in Delftship ... but IMO it's not that easy and not
: that accurate for kayaks. Delftship opens with a stock hull and
: modifications are made to that to get what you want. You can input a
: background image and modify the stock hull to match the outline of the
: background image. But you need a GOOD quality scan to minimize pixelation
: of the lines (which ruins accuracy) ... and even with a good background
: image it may be tough to be accurate when ya match the lines of the image
: because small nudges of the stock hull lines to match the background image
: may not be visible on your monitor. I had a heck of a time getting lines
: to match within 1/8 inch or less.

: Ken Blanton

I haven't used FreeShip to try to make drawings of scale models, but just with the ways I have used it, I wouldn't say that it would be the best of programs for that. However, I know you can import images and all. I would think that although the model you generate from a background image may not match the original design within 1/8th an inch, it still may produce a good enough design to build from. I would think if one was trying to copy from an image down to that degree of accuracy, that they would be willing to instead take the more efficient road of purchasing plans instead.

In my opinion, as an amateur maybe-wanna-be boat designer, the strength of FreeShip is that you can develope of a boat design with VERY little information to begin with. Just to practice you can start importing simple curves for your Keel and Shear lines and then work from there. And whereas Rhino may be able to automatically extract surfaces and things like that, it isn't hard to make equation tables in MSoft Excel that find the intersection of two lines (like the Shear and Keel) to get numbers for your hard chine. Its pretty simple math, early Trig stuff. Then you let the Control Curves (which fair the lines) from FreeShip take over and see what you get. You may be surprised how much fun you have playing around with these kinds of options. I've always used to Import Chines feature to import text files of my offset numbers. It has worked really well for me so far.

I will admit tho, I am trying to determine if I think one of the nicer professional software packages is worth dropping some coin on just for playing around with kayak designs... I really wouldn't think i'd find worth in them until I start wanted to design things like larger sailing vessels~