Marine Weight Schedule - User Manual

Marine Weight Schedule is a plugin for Rhino 3D designed to generate - from a vessel’s 3D model - a bill of masses/inertias, as well as a Bill Of Materials. It takes into account points, curves, surfaces, solids and blocks, and uses the parameters from the layers' names to apply the unitary/lineic/surfacic/volumic masses, with a margin percentage applied.

A command is also provided to generate a hydrostatic report at a given height interval (based on Rhino hydrostatics features)

Both reports will be generated as excel files (.xlsx) based on a customizable template, but Microsoft excel doesn’t need to be installed on the computer.

The plugin installer can be downloaded at: https://www.tomkod.com/product/marine-weight-schedule/
A free trial is included, and yearly licenses can be purchased on the aforementioned page.
Marine Weight Schedule works with Rhino 6¹⁾ and Rhino7²⁾.

This command can be used only from the command line prompt. It displays the plugin's current revision and license status.

This command can be used only from the command line prompt. It displays the plugin's activation form.

See license_activation.

Computes the whole model masses, as well as a Bill Of Materials⁴⁾ and generates an excel report.

For each layer⁵⁾, the command will retrieve the Mass, Margin and Vertical offset values from the layer name⁶⁾, then:

1. For each rhino object, the actual mass and gravity center will be computed, using the layer values. The layer's Mass will be used differently, depending on the object's type: punctual mass for Points, lineic mass for curves, surface mass for surfaces⁷⁾, and volumic mass for closed polysurfaces.
2. At the same time, the Bill-of-Materials will be created internally.
3. An excel report will be created.

The fundamental idea of this plugin is to match data from the model's objects and their layer. For this reason, each layer should contain only one specific material. For example:

• The layer Deck1:SectionB:Nuts could contain only points, and the layer's (mass) information would be used as a punctual mass for each nut.
• The layer Deck1:SectionB:plates could contain only surfaces, and the layer's (mass) information would be used as a surface mass for each plate.

The document's layers should follow the following naming convention:

LayerName *MaterialName* (Mass) %Margin% |VerticalOffset|

where:

• Mass will be the ponctual/lineic/surfacic/volumic mass
• Margin (optional) will be the percentage to add to the object's mass.
• VerticalOffset (optional) will be the the vertical offset to apply to the layer's masses
• MaterialName⁸⁾ (optional) will the material's name. In the Bill-of-Material, the materials are displayed in a specific column.

Two layers with the same name but different materials will not be grouped together.

A specific naming convention has been added to properly count the stiffeners in the Bill-of-Materials, to consider the scenarii explained below.

• Implicit stiffeners

There are some cases where you don't want/need to create an actual geometry for your structure stiffeners, for example when you are at the early stage of your project. Implicit stiffeners let you count the required stiffener lengths relative to the layer's metal sheet's areas.

LAYERNAME:   MyLayerName (Mass) %Margin% |VerticalOffset| [StiffenerName s=value]

In the Bill-of-Material, this would create two outputs: an area for the surfaces in “MyLayerName”, and a length for their stiffeners.

For example:

LAYERNAME:   MyLayerName *MaterialName* (Mass) %Margin% |VerticalOffset| [StiffenerName s=value *MaterialName*]

• Stiffeners defined as curves in the model

Two kind of curves-defined stiffeners can be used:

• Folded plates

LAYERNAME:   W:120x6 BF60

This will be counted as one surface, Thickness 6, width=120+60. Thus the result in the Bill-of-materials will be:

• Profile with flat plate

W:120x6 F:80x8

This will count as one surface, Thickness 6, width=120, plus one profile 80×8

• Stiffeners defined as surfaces in the model

In some cases, you might want to represent your stiffeners as a 3D surface in the model, but count them as lineic outputs in the Bill-of-Materials because they are technically profiles.

LAYERNAME:   F:80x8

This would output:

As for the weight estimate, the layer's optional %Tolerance% will be considered:

LAYERNAME:   F:80x8 |34.1| (87.2) %3.4%

This would output:

By default, rhino® blocks⁹⁾ are ignored by the command. However, we provide several commands to transform blocks into GBlocks, which are considered in the reports as punctual masses.

See gblock_setdata

When the whole model has been processed, an excel¹⁰⁾ report is generated, and the user is invited to pick a name and location for the resulting file. Bill of masses main sheet:

Bill of masses detailed sheets for Volumes, surfaces, curves, and points:

Bill of materials:

A custom ViewPort is created with the gravity center displayed:

No option available.

Using the command's scripted mode -ProjectWeightReportByHullSection will enable an hidden option:

• AxisLengthInMeters: Enter the gravity center's preview axis length used in the result views

This command behavior can be customized, by editing some files in the install directory¹¹⁾.

The excel report template “PWE_Model.xlsx” can be modified to fit your graphical needs, however, it is recommended to edit only the text values, the column sizes, and the logos while keeping the document's general layout.

The naming convention for information specified in the layer's names is based on REGEX (Regular expression), which is the most common way to match a text string to a pattern. The default values can be edited in the file “MWS_CustomRegex.yaml” with any standard text editor.

You can test in real-time your customized regular expressions at https://regex101.com/, and see if your pattern matches your layer's names.

Example1: The default regular expression to match the implicit stiffeners between square brackets: [StiffenerName s=value *MaterialName*]

Example2: The edited regular expression to match the implicit stiffeners between either square brackets or exclamation marks: [StiffenerName s=value *MaterialName*] or !StiffenerName s=value *MaterialName*!

This command¹²⁾ splits the model into sections, then runs ProjectWeightReport on each section. The resulting Excel file will contain the usual model-wide report, plus independent reports for every section. (Named from S001 to Sxxx)

1. Run the command ProjectWeightReportByHullSection
2. Pick the x-axis coordinates delimiting the sections¹³⁾.
3. The script will split internally the curves and surfaces, and sort points and volumes by each section's bounding box. GBlocks will be allocated using the location of their gravity centers.

Using the command's scripted mode -ProjectWeightReportByHullSection will enable two hidden options:

• AxisLengthInMeters: Enter the gravity center's preview axis length used in the result views
• DrawSplittedGeometries: When enabled, a layer ProjectWeightReportByHullSection will be added to the model, with the split geometry. This is useful to check if no curves/surfaces were lost in the sections' splitting operations.

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Computes a hydrostatic analysis at different heights and generates an excel report.

The hull's surface or polysurface is selected as input. Once validated, Rhino's hydrostatic calculation is run at various heights as defined in options, and an excel report is generated.

The excel report template “Hydro_Model.xlsx” can be modified in the plugin's install directory, usually:

%AppData%\McNeel\Rhinoceros\7.0\Plug-ins\Marine Weight Schedule for RH6-RH7 (dac6da37-23fc-4ad6-9b46-33a2cad9e13b)\VersionNumber
(Adapt Rhino's version if needed, as well as the plugin's version) It is recommended to edit only the text values and the logos while keeping the document's general layout.

Adds gravity center and mass information to a block. GBlocks are considered by the command ProjectWeightReport , which makes them extremely useful for your pieces of equipment.

1. Start the command
2. Pick a rhino block¹⁶⁾ in the model
3. Pick the GBlock's gravity center
4. Enter the GBlock's mass
5. Enter the GBlock's name (By default, Rhino's block name is used)
6. Click OK or press Enter

Lists every existing GBlock name and masses to the command line.

1. Start the command
2. A window is shown with details about every block instances in the model

Reads a GBlock data.

1. Select a GBlock
2. The data is shown in the command line:

Select a block by their GBlock Name. (From a list of available GBlock names)

1. Launch the command
2. Pick a GBlock name from the list
3. Every instance of this GBlock will be selected in the model

Selects the next block in the document which is not a GBlock (gravity center and mass are undefined)

1. Launch the command
2. The commands loops between the non-GBlocks instances in the model. (Press ESC to leave)

Renames a GBlock definition (Every instance will be renamed)

1. Launch the command
2. Pick a Gblock from the list
3. Enter a new name for the GBlock