Maxsurf 9.0 sees enhancements to analysis functions

Naval architecture application Maxsurf from Formation Design Systems has reached version 9.0. The company says this release adds several enhancements including improvements in both speed and accuracy for all analysis functions. The Hydromax stability module now runs stability calculations approximately 40% faster, says Formation. Maxsurf is designed to work with a range of 2D and 3D CAD programs for construction detailing and the company says it has improved the transfer of data from the application to other programs via DXF and IGES files. DXF files benefit from the more accurate calculation of contour points, while the IGES NURBS surface format has been improved to support a higher level of trimming information. In most cases trimmed surfaces created in Maxsurf will import into programs such as Mechanical Desktop, Microstation, Vellum Solids, CATIA and Rhino, says the company. Hydromax has been updated to allow it to perform basic batch processing. A single batch analysis command sets Hydromax to run large angle stability and equilibrium analyses for all combinations of load and damage cases. Any criteria which have been set are evaluated at the end of each analysis and accumulated in the report window, says Formation. Results are written to a tab delimited text file which can be imported into Microsoft Excel or Word for post processing and report generation.