Contours may be passed through your design to give greater definition of the surface. For example, you might wish to see your design with the sections displayed at the frame spacing you have chosen. To do this you would set the Grid to the required frame spacing and then show the section contours for the design. The selected contours are displayed on all visible surfaces.

 View a video showing how to display contours in the different view windows.

The Display | Contours option allows you to select which contours are drawn on the screen at any given time. Any combination of contours may be chosen from the contours dialog.

You can set the colour of contour lines by selecting Colour from the View menu. When drawing the contours on the surface, Maxsurf uses the Precision as set in Display | Precision. See Surface Precision on page 89 for important information on precision.

For information about inserting sections, buttocks, waterlines and more, see the Setting up the Grid section on page 19.

You may choose to display:

Sections

When the Sections are activated, all sections will be shown in the Body Plan and Perspective windows, otherwise only the current section will be displayed.

Shown below is a design with 100 stations auto-spaced along the Datum Waterline.

Sections

Buttocks

Buttocks can be displayed in the Profile and Perspective windows.

Datum Waterline

The shape of the Datum Waterline will be displayed in the Perspective window.

Waterlines

 Waterlines can be displayed in the Plan and Perspective windows.

Diagonals

When the Diagonals are activated, Diagonals will be displayed in the Plan, Profile and Perspective windows. Diagonals are shown as true diagonals in all windows, except for the Plan view where they are displayed as perpendicular projections so that the diagonal's transverse offset in the Plan view is in fact the distance along the diagonal from the centreline to the hull surface.

When both waterlines and diagonals are selected, the Plan will separate them with the waterlines above the centreline and the diagonals below the centreline, in the traditional manner.

Edges

Normally all surface edges will be displayed. However in some cases you may wish to hide the surface edges in order to show only the sections. In this case, turning off the Edges display will give the following result.

Bonded Edges

Show or hide all bonded edges.

Feature lines

Feature lines are created whenever sufficient control points are compacted together to form a hard edge within the surface. To display these features, select the feature lines option. The illustration below shows the use of a feature line to create a knuckle in a set of bow sections.

Parametrics

Selecting Parametrics displays the parametric surface, or the surface data calculated by Maxsurf from which other surface contours are derived. This view is useful for the examination of the surface as a whole.

Parametric lines do not lie in any particular plane and give a good indication of any inconsistencies in surfaces that might arise due to misplaced control points.

The colour of the parametric curves may be either the colour of the surface or the colour defined for parametric curves. Use the option in the Preferences dialog to select which you prefer.

Intersections

Selecting Intersections calculates and highlights all intersection lines between surfaces in the Plan, Profile, Body Plan, and Perspective windows.

The intersection line (red) of a bowthruster with the hull.

Trimming curves

Trimming curves can exist only in models that have been imported from Rhino using the File | Import | .3DM Rhino file format. See Importing Rhino .3dm files on page 182 for more information.

Surface Curves

Surface Curves are curves that are embedded within the surface. At the moment these are generated only by the Workshop program, where they are used to define stringer paths and plate boundaries. However, a design that has been saved using Workshop can display these curves in Maxsurf.

Inclined Sections

Workshop also allows the intersection of arbitrarily inclined planes with the hull. The resulting inclined sections can be displayed in Maxsurf.

Deducted Sections

These are sections, which have had the skin thickness of intersecting surfaces deducted. Skin thicknesses are calculated normal to the surface. For more information, see Outside Arrows on page 87 and Surface Materials and Skin Thickness on page 88.

You may select contours in the same way as you select control points (by clicking on them or by dragging a selection box around them). Once selected, it is possible to look at the curvature of the contour, see Displaying Curvature on Contours on page 91.

When the pointer is over a contour or surface edge, the name of the contour or edge will be displayed in the status bar at the bottom left of the main window.