Feature Patches
A major limitation of NURBS based surface design is that if the designer wants to introduce additional control in one region of a surface he must add complete new rows and/or columns of control points. This proliferation of vertices makes it difficult to produce a fair surface. Autoship 9 introduces a system of introducing local shape control on a surface without dealing with unwanted control points.

A Feature Patch has default or user-defined boundaries. It can be shaped by one or more control points. The patch blends at its edges to the shape of the parent surface. The blend transition may be positional, tangent or curvature continuous.

When a surface has a patch applied, it is still fully editable using only the original control points. When the parent surface shape is changed the patch moves with the change, retaining its own shape.

Patches may overlap and be nested.

A bow bulb created as a feature patch. The patch area is indicated by change in the mesh colour. The patch control points used to shape the bulb are indicated, while the control points of the base surface are hidden.

A rendering of the bow surface, including the feature patch.

Edge Mate
Ship hulls and superstructures are often designed as several surfaces which must be joined at their edges without leaving gaps. The Edge Mate facility allows all or part of the edge of one surface to be matched exactly to all or part of another surface's edge with full control over the shape of the transition. The user can choose positional, tangent or curvature continuity from one surface to the other. The portion of the surface used to make the transition is user-controlled. When only part of an edge is mated, there is full user control over the transition area at the end of the mate. Any or all of the edges of a surface can be mated.

Project Integration and Export
Surfaces which incorporate Feature Patches and/or Edge Mates are fully integrated into their Autoship project. They are contoured, intersected, trimmed, meshed and rendered just as any other surface. They also export exactly via IGES, making transfer of designs from Autoship to other programs simple and accurate.

Additional Features
In addition to these major tool additions, Autoship 9 incorporates other significant advances:

• A revised Navigator for organizing and accessing model components. Points curves and surfaces can be organized into collection trees for fast access.
  
• Edit planes. Define a plane oblique to the coordinate axes and edit with respect to that plane. Edit in the 3D view with respect to one of the principal planes or an oblique plane which you define.
  
• Alternate main screen layouts.
  
• Surface colour. Make it easy to pick out one surface in a complex design by assigning it a colour. This is for outline drawing, not for rendering where Autoship's system of surface finishes still applies.
  
• Translucency in rendering.
  
• Single button operation to create station contours from baseline data.
  
• Increased use of context menus to speed access to operations.

To learn more, or to purchase the Autoship software, contact your local Autoship Dealer.