A model ship, modelled from scratch and printed
Eight components, a lofted hull, and a keel designed around the centre of mass
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The finished model ship, painted orange and blue with rigged masts, floating on dark water at night with architectural lighting in the background
- Context
- Personal project
- Year
- 2025
- Role
- Sole author
- Team size
- 1
- Tools
- SOLIDWORKS · Lofted surfaces · Mass properties · Centre of mass analysis · FDM 3D printing · Hand painting
- Contribution
- Sole author, modelled, printed and painted in my own time
A ship modelled from scratch in SOLIDWORKS across eight components, with a keel designed around the centre of mass so that it floats upright, and then 3D printed and painted by hand. Nobody set this one, and it is the clearest example of the CAD practice I keep doing outside of coursework.
Why I built it
I find detailed modelling genuinely enjoyable, and a hull is a good thing to practise on, since it is an organic double-curved form that cannot be built from a single extrusion and instead has to be developed properly across its whole length. This means the project is as much about keeping the software sharp as it is about ending up with a ship on a shelf, however the ship is also the point, since painting something you drew yourself is a different kind of satisfying.
The modelling
The hull is built from a series of lofts running between sketches placed on seven separate reference planes along the length of the boat, and this is what lets the cross-section change gradually from bow to stern rather than stepping between fixed profiles. On top of that sit the extruded and cut features for the deck and the openings, mirrored across the centreline so that both sides stay identical when one of them changes, along with linear patterns for the repeated elements and fillets where the surfaces meet. Furthermore the whole thing is split into eight components in order to be printable and assemblable, which is a constraint that shapes the modelling from the beginning rather than at the end.
Designing the keel around the centre of mass
The hull came first, however a hull on its own does not sit properly in the water, and this is where the keel came in. I used the mass properties tool in SOLIDWORKS in order to find the centre of mass of the assembly, and then designed the keel around that result rather than the other way round, so that it sits below the waterline and pulls the weight downwards. Furthermore I placed it at the centre of mass itself, which means that neither side sits lower than the other and the boat floats level rather than listing to one side. Here this is the part of the project where the modelling stopped being decorative and started having to answer to something, since a shape that looks correct on screen can still be wrong once it is in water, and the only way to know was to check the numbers before committing the whole thing to print.
Printed and painted
Printed on FDM and finished by hand. It is important to note that printing a model in eight parts teaches you fairly quickly which surfaces need support and which orientations ruin a finish, and this is knowledge that has been more useful on other projects than the ship itself has.
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The painted model ship afloat in a reflecting pool at night, shown in its full setting with lit architecture behind it
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The unpainted 3D-printed hull afloat in the same pool, showing the raw printed finish before painting
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Several of the printed components laid out on a wooden floor before assembly: two mirrored hull halves, a deck piece and mast components