Yacht Design School's
Frequently Asked Questions
Pick the question that interests you or scroll down to read all of them:
When I graduate
will I be a Naval Architect or a Yacht Designer?
How
does taking the YDS course compare with University degree programs?
How
does YDS compare with Westlawn, Southampton Institute, & the Landing School?
Would the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale’s program “Yacht & Marine Design” be
a good alternative to YDS for someone wanting to be a yacht designer?
Why was this school founded
and why do you run it?
When I graduate will I receive a
diploma?
Will I learn to
design commercial boats as well as yachts?
How much time will it
take to complete the course?
What kind
of support can I expect while working on the lessons?
What are the total
expenses associated with the course?
Why are your tuition rates so low, as compared to the other
schools?
Can I pay a large amount of money up front, rather than pay by the lesson?
Should I do the main curriculum entirely using manual drafting, entirely in CAD,
or some combination of the two?
Do I really need these tools?
Do I retain
the rights to the designs I do during the course?
Can
I take the course just for my own interest even if I don't want to become a professional?
What are the mathematical
requirements?
Can I order all the lessons at once?
How much can yacht
draftsmen and yacht designers make?
Occasionally
I have heard people claim that yacht designers do not make much money, is this true?
What would a typical career path be?
Is there a job placement service
at YDS?
How
large a vessel does a naval architect specializing in yacht and small craft design create?
Do you still teach manual
drafting?
Do you teach Computer Assisted
Design?
Will
I have to take your elective courses in Computer Assisted Design to get work?
I
already have non-Rhino CAD software. Do you allow use of non-Rhino CAD in the course?
Should I take the Computer Assisted Design Course before, after, or during the YDS main curriculum?
I
have a Bachelor of Science degree from a college that is supposed to qualify me to
practice as a naval architect but I don't seem to be able to get a job in yacht or small
commercial craft design. Would YDS be useful to me?
How
do I get experience in dealing with clients while taking the course?
Do
students ever get work in the field before completing the course?
How
easy is it to get work in the field and eventually run my own business?
To what extent is
naval architecture a men only club?
Where do naval architects locate?
What kind of designs are
most often requested?
What
Limits are there on where lessons can be sent and are there extra shipping charges?
I attend another school, which will not help me with remedial math, must I
switch to your school?
I attend another school and my instructor says that my drafting isn't good
enough, that they don’t teach drafting, and I should go take a drafting course.
Can you help?
I attend another school and for part of my training they require me to use CAD,
but they don't actually teach CAD. Can you help?
Will you teach structural analysis and structural design to a student of another
school, or a practicing designer who never got this training?
Will you
answer my questions if I'm taking a competing course?
Is it
OK for a practicing yacht designer to attend your school?
Do you teach multihulls?
May I just order all the lessons and not bother with taking the tests or getting
a diploma?
Why
isn't Yacht Design School advertised in the boating magazines?
When I graduate will I be a Naval Architect or a Yacht Designer?
The profession is naval
architecture. Our school teaches naval architecture with a specialty in yacht and small
craft design. Whether you use the term "naval architect" is usually a matter
your choice, or in some cases of legal definition of the government in your state,
province or country, whichever applies. In the United States there are, to our knowledge,
two states, Washington and Oregon, which reserve the title naval architect to those taking
specific tests and taking out a state license. If you wish to use the term naval
architect, while working in those states you must take their tests. However we know
of no state, or indeed country, which prohibits naval architects from practicing under the
title of yacht designer. The field is simply too small to bother to regulate that closely.
Back to top.
How does taking the YDS course compare with University degree
programs?
To our knowledge there
is only one
university degree program, the one from Southampton in Britain, which has a suitable curriculum to prepare naval architects to
practice in the specialty of yacht and small craft design. To be blunt many of the most
famous schools no longer seem to be teaching even the design of larger ships. It seems to
be the fashion now to charge a very great deal of money for a university education and to
separate the academic studies as far as possible from the practical information necessary
to begin a career.
Most of the famous yacht designers in history
never took a large ship naval architectural degree. Most of them learned from other naval
architects, took courses like ours, or were self taught. Further only a very small number
of practicing naval architects today who specialize in yacht and small craft design have
university based Bachelor of Science degrees with a major in naval architecture. The schools teaching
yacht and small craft naval architecture have invariably been small institutions teaching
a few hundred students at a time. This is because there are not, and never have been, large
numbers of people who want to design yachts and other small craft.
In our experience the four active schools
teaching
yacht design in the entire world are sufficient to train all those who want to join the
profession. We feel that the intensely focused study, more advanced body of
knowledge, and very high degree of personal
attention tend to make our school one of the best for those wishing to be practicing naval
architects specializing in yacht and small craft design.
Given the enormous differential in cost between
our program and the less applicable curriculum produced by the major universities we would
find it unjustifiable for anyone to recommend the university over a school such as ours,
whether our particular school was chosen or not. There are others with a different opinion
of course. We have had extensive correspondence with a naval architect who went the
university route and apparently feels that correspondence schools and residential schools
that specialize in yacht and small craft naval architecture are not proper education. It
is almost impossible for us to write out and organize his ideas so that we do not seem to
be distorting his views. It is note worthy
that this gentleman does not in fact practice as a yacht and small craft naval
architect in the private sector but rather is employed in designing vessels for
the government.
We believe that it is also note
worthy that a significant proportion of those entering our school are
graduate "large ship" naval architects or marine engineers, both just out of
school and of many years experience, who wish to transition to yacht and small
craft design but have found that no one in the field will hire them unless they
take our course. Presumably they don't always literally say it has to be our
course, but that is the general message I'm getting. This is not that
anyone disparages their achievements but that people in our field recognize how
very different the large ship work is from yacht and small craft design and that
people transitioning between the two simply will not be efficient enough
employees or associates until they've been retrained. Back to
top.
How does YDS compare with Westlawn, Southampton Institute, & the
Landing School?
In general we have found that
the other major programs all seem to be reasonably good on basic theory within
limitations mentioned below as needed. Our school adds
to this much more work in developing both drawing skills and judgment in using the
theory. Further we go much deeper into advanced hull lines development,
proper analysis of frictional resistance, and structural analysis soundly based
upon science and some other items than Westlawn has in recent years. Some
material from instructors at Westlawn indicates some flaws in understanding
stability as well, though this may not be embodied in the actual curriculum. A degree from Southamption Institute or Westlawn will probably satisfy an employer
that you understand much of the theory of design. A degree from The Landing School
will probably get you an entry level drafting job. I believe in the case of
Southampton Institute there is a reasonable emphasis on structural analysis as
well. The Landing School appears to be oriented toward
the practical instruction to gain an entry level drafting position. However when a student
finishes our course they will have a portfolio of actual designs that will convince
employers that they can actually draw boats for an employer with confidence. There is a
subtle difference in emphasis here. Also this is a very personal course in which you are
in constant contact with a real working designer, not an academic teacher of design.
Westlawn was once a major
competitor and may well be again under their new ownership. When they were owned by the National Marine Manufacturers
Association and later the American Boat and Yacht Council (ABYC) they appeared to be more oriented toward training people to be
draftsmen for production boat builders. As of early 2015 the school has been sold to a group of three
individuals from California, Philadelphia, and Britain, who have worked rapidly
to put the school on a sound financial footing. For the moment at least
they are employing many of the same people who worked there when owned by ABYC.
After a long conversation with their president we believe they have made, and
are making, the decisions needed to put the school on a track that ensures its
survival. Given the new business plan
there, they could well build up a significant student body again and be a
significant competitor again in the future. In an effort to
provide a reasonable comparison with what they have done in the past I must rely on information given to me by Westlawn students. Since Westlawn students who talk to me obviously tend to be
students who aren't getting on well at Westlawn or are coming to us for material
not available at Westlawn, I have tried to be fair in
assessing how they actually compare with our school. After all I'm sure there
have been students who did not feel they had a good fit with us who talk to them! I hope that
most of this they would agree with. I have been shown letters purporting to be
from them which point out that students are expected to be proficient in math
and drafting and that they are not in the remedial math or remedial drafting
business. Perhaps this will change under new ownership. This is a bit different than our approach. We expect to put in time
with some of our students on some kind of math assistance. We teach
drafting absolutely from scratch and even students who have been practicing naval architects
for decades have said that they learn from us in that area. We also put more emphasis on training people in the business end of the profession so
that they have some preparation for running their own business. Having said all this it is
important to understand that in the past Westlawn has handled the primary training for a number of
excellent designers. We run our school because we have a different training orientation
and believe in a very heavy emphasis on gaining as much practical experience as possible
through the course. We also believe in students being able to pay as they go and take the
program at their own pace without financial penalty. Based on a text book
purporting to be one of theirs that was given to me by one of their students and
which appears to contradict conventional materials science and the principles
of structural analysis, we would suggest that a couple of college level courses
in materials and structural analysis would be a good idea for those going the Westlawn route.
Again the new owners may well provide direction toward more conventional
materials science and structural analysis. I do not mean this to be a criticism of anyone at Westlawn
past or present.
I'm sure everyone, including the author of the book in question, is trying very
hard to provide the very best for their students. Nor do I mean to imply
that our instructors are flawless in the scope of their knowledge, or that our
texts are perfect. We too are just trying to do the best we can and we can
all always benefit from more education.
As I understand it from hearing about
Southampton through quotes from people who teach there, they stress developing a
theoretical background and have a large amount of laboratories and test equipment. This is
wonderful and would be very exciting to be around. However, they do say that they don't
really teach drawing and they don't teach you to develop judgment in applying the theory.
They assume that you will learn that on the job and recommend at least a year of
internship before looking for paying work. Our course has somewhat different
emphasis. We stress developing your drawing skills and developing judgment in applying the
normal calculations. The underlying theory is taught thoroughly but is tightly integrated
into learning the practical work of design and running a design firm. Our reasoning being
that you can't get a job as a draftsman or do a good job as a designer if you can't draw
boats and that all theory in the world is not much help if you don't know when to apply
it. Our school also has the advantage of all main curriculum instruction being by a naval architect who is
a principle in a major yacht design firm with assistance from his draftsmen and
associate designers. Our other curricula are taught
by practicing experts in their particular fields. This keeps us pretty close to the practical
needs of the industry. In fact MacNaughton Yacht Designs, which is run by YDS instructor
Thomas A. MacNaughton largely recruits its draftsmen from the YDS student body. Again
having put our differences in what would naturally be a positive light for our school we
want to emphasize that a number of excellent designers have gotten their primary training
from Southampton Institute.
Although it is a purely residential course
intended to get you an entry level job in design, and costs a good deal more than our
school, the Landing School appears to have an intensely practical orientation, sufficient
exposure to basic theory, and the advantage of frequent visits by quite prestigious
designers to help inspire students. If there is any single school that we would recommend
aside from ours this would be it. Again some well known designers either have graduated
from the school or are supporters of it.
There is one more school that we
should mention where some have told us you can major in yacht and small craft
design per se. This is Webb Institute, which is generally speaking
a college which trains people to be "large ship" naval architects. However
we understand that with special permission one can specialize in yacht and small
craft design. This school is remarkable in that it is fully endowed and
does not charge tuition. In fact I understand students actually receive
living expenses while attending. As you can imagine their enrollment is
limited and it is a tough school to get into. They do have a very good
reputation.
We hope to eventually fully endow at
least our "CAD Course" instruction and someday perhaps even the main curriculum.
That would be wonderful but it will be quite awhile before there is any chance
of accomplishing this.
This covers our major "competition".
We do hope we have been reasonably fair to all of them. Readers should understand that the
information presented here is the best we have based upon articles on these schools,
statements of their instructors or owners, and comments of their students. We cannot say
definitively that these are balanced views. You should ask them the same questions you ask
us and form your own opinions. Back to top.
Would the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale’s program “Yacht & Marine Design” be
a good alternative to YDS for someone wanting to be a yacht designer?
From our investigation of their curriculum and faculty, correspondence with
students attending their school, and consultation with a colleague who has
researched the various alternatives for those wishing training in yacht and
small craft naval architecture, we all appear to agree that the “Yacht & Marine
Design” program does not teach people to be “yacht designers” in the sense that
we mean. We are disappointed with their choice of name for their program. They
do not appear to teach a branch of naval architecture such that a graduate would
actually be intended to produce the complete design of a vessel with all the
drawings and calculations necessary for it to be a success. We are told that
they teach none of the mathematics of naval architecture and structural
analysis. Their faculty list does not appear to include anyone trained in yacht
and small craft naval architecture, nor is anyone listed as being a teacher of
specifically marine related subjects. They appear to be teaching “yacht
styling” and “interior decorating”. There is nothing wrong with this. Your
author would be delighted to take many of their courses, which sound attractive
and useful in developing aspects of sketches, renderings, animations and other
conceptual and promotional material. Our own Yacht Design School places great
emphasis on yacht aesthetics, a bit different than “styling”, and safe,
efficient, comfortable accommodations, which again is a bit different than
“interior decorating”. We add more instruction every year on computer aided
modeling and rendering and hope to expand into other aspects of using computers
in concept design and promotion. Nevertheless these elements are a small part
of our curriculum. With the Fort Lauderdale curriculum these elements appear to
be everything. Graduates of theirs will be presumed by employers to not know
most of what people in the industry consider to be the profession of yacht and
small craft naval architecture or “yacht design”. The program should be renamed
“Yacht Styling & Interior Decorating” rather than imply that it teaches the
profession of yacht design or yacht and small craft naval architecture as it is
normally understood in the industry. In an industry definitely needing improved
education, we feel that this institution is taking a step backward from the
standard of a broadly and deeply educated work force. We must recommend that,
if your intention is to work for a design firm or custom boat building firm and
actually design vessels from start to finish, doing all the calculation and
design work, you should not be taking the Fort Lauderdale course. You
should be choosing between Yacht Design School and the other schools mentioned
above depending upon your goals, preferences, and finances. Who should take the
Fort Lauderdale course in preference to ours? Everyone seems to agree that
their program would be a good bet for someone who wished to limit their work to
being a stylist or interior decorator within, say, a large firm which designs
very large luxury yachts or within a large custom boat building firm which
needed someone who specialized only in stylistic and decorative elements and
whose stylistic treatments will be turned over to others to be actually
designed. However this appears to be a limited market. The firms that we are
familiar with will not hire someone who is only a stylist or interior
decorator. Perhaps such a person might aim to eventually do such work on a
consulting basis for several firms. We have spent a great deal of time
researching this and writing this answer and hope that we have been completely
fair in our appraisal. While we feel a need to clarify the differences between
what we teach and what they teach, we assume that they are doing a good job of
what they do teach. If that matches what you want to learn, they could be a
good choice. Back to top.
Why was this school
founded and why do you run it?
Yacht Design School was
founded when our favorite school to refer people to, Yacht Design Institute, was bought by
Maine Maritime Academy and then, inexplicably, closed down. We feel that Maine Maritime
Academy was under the impression that there were very large numbers of people who wanted
to be naval architects specializing in yacht and small craft design. There are not. Yacht
Design School was then founded in an attempt to make sure that there was a way for people
to get the necessary education to maintain and increase the standards of the world's naval
architects. Further we felt that with modern communications our type of education, whether
you call it correspondence courses, or distance learning has become the most cost
effective and practical method of obtaining higher education in our profession.
The above is just the factor that
explains the initial start date. See
"Why We Run Yacht Design School"
for a much deeper look at our reasons for wanting to do it and why it has been a
continuing passion for over a quarter of a century.
Back to top.
When I
graduate will I receive a diploma?
Yes, you will receive a
diploma in Naval Architecture with a Specialty in Yacht and Small Craft Design. This
certifies your competence in the knowledge and skills of the profession. This will get you
in the door for an interview just about anywhere. Your portfolio of student work should
get you a job in one of the firms of your choice. Back to
top.
Will I learn to design commercial boats as well as yachts?
Yes. All the knowledge will be
there with the exception of specific cargo or fishing gear functionality which will depend
on your ability to talk to the commercial boat operator and define their needs. You will
have the structural analysis knowledge to design what ever type of cargo handling or
fishing gear is required if it is not an off the shelf item. Back
to top.
How
much time will it take to complete the course?
At present our best estimate
is that the average student should take about 4 years to complete the course, although in
theory a student working 8 hours a day weekdays or a couple of hours an evening and both
days on weekends could complete the course in two years. Depending upon how fast you learn
you will probably spend somewhere between 2,000 hours and 4,000 hours drawing, calculating
and reading. However this depends so much on the individual and how much time they can put
in per week that these are only an indication. Generally those who put in the most time
per week actually take the least number of total hours to complete the work. It is quite
normal for students to get work in the field well before completing the course. By
the time you are about 1/3 of the way through the course you might well be ready to get a
job as an entry level draftsman under the direction of a skilled designer.
This is a course which attempts to fully
prepare you for a technical profession. You should expect to work hard. You should also
expect that the satisfaction level in learning this material is high and the eventual
financial rewards significant. Back to top.
What kind of support can I expect while working on the lessons?
You may contact us at any time
during working hours with questions on lessons. While you can use regular mail,
or phone, for most purposes email is superior and is highly encouraged. Distance learning
students are welcome to visit our offices when they can for extra help but must remember
that they should give us a fair amount of notice so that there will be no disappointments
through a schedule conflict. We have students visit from all over the
world. Back to top.
What
are the total expenses associated with the course?
By the time you are ready to
run a professional design firm you will have spent, given current tuition levels,
around $7,801
on the lessons of the main curriculum. Most students find it easiest and most cost
effective to take our "CAD Course" first and do the entire main curriculum using the
Rhino on screen design software. The most expensive option here would be
$1,395 for the course and the Rhinoceros(r) software with rendering and
animation plug ins. Some students with prior knowledge of Rhino or other
CAD software, or a lot of confidence in their ability to learn on their own
simply buy the Rhino educational license at our student price of $195.
Additional programs we recommend later in the main curriculum can cost $330.
Unfortunately vital manual drafting tools are now impossible to buy new, which
has closed off the option of learning to design using manual
methods. In any case learning to design "on screen" is nowadays less
expensive and more powerful, so it is undoubtedly the best option. You will
be likely to have spent, say, $2,000 on
books. The prices for the lessons are in the YDS Brochure,
on the school page, and on the old
Enrollment Form which is still on the site for the
moment. Virtually everyone these days has a computer
capable of CAD work, and which can also be used for writing magazine articles, developing
and maintaining a web site, and communicating by email. If you
wanted to specially invest in all the best top of the line computer equipment
from scratch, which most won't need to do these days, you could add that in.
A top of the line computer with a good color printer, DVD+RW drive, scanner,
digital camera, Microsoft Office Professional, Microsoft Expression Web, and the
Rhino/Flamingo CAD and rendering packages could run up to $2,000. Your web site will
probably cost you around $50 per month for access and hosting. So your non-recurring
expenses by the time you start your own professional office, which at this point will be
fully equipped, could run up as high as $12,125. There is absolutely no need for
fancy offices. I have never seen an economic justification for anything other
than working out of your home unless you are working for someone else. The most
prestigious firms in the world were traditionally quite happy to use plywood
doors to draft on. Our director and administrator's house and boat are at present about
half offices.
Fortunately with today's collaborative software, which allows people working for
us to work from anywhere in the world in real time just as if they were right
here in the office with us, we will probably never need the expense of a
separate office building. Back to top.
Why are your tuition rates so low, as compared to the other schools?
There is no magic in
this. The reasons are simple and result from the different structure and
situation of the school rather than depth or quality of education. The
following structural differences were a deliberate choice as we wanted to
create a school that would be affordable for the largest possible number of
people:
1) Aside from our web site, which was put up to provide immediate
access to school information, we do no promotion at all. How can not
advertising at all possibly work? The answer is simple. We rely on the
confidence in us created by our extremely personal attention and service, our
ability to get people good jobs, and student and design firm word of mouth,
recommendations, and referrals. We have always believed that these are far more
powerful and effective than advertising and so it has proved. For the first
seven years of the school's existence, before the Internet revolution, we did
not even have the web site to help. Yet we always grew at a steady pace.
Admittedly the web site has accelerated this. Since our competitors advertise
heavily in many expensive yachting magazines, their expenses are enormously
greater than ours. In fact the ad expenses of competing schools must be a large
percentage of their budget, which must ultimately be borne by the student.
Although we have become the largest school we never tried for size, we were only
interested in supplying the best possible education in the most personal
possible manner to how ever many students enrolled. If you don’t care about
size, the entire business plan of the school looks different and advertising
becomes superfluous. Ironically it is apparently partly our personal “small
school” atmosphere, in addition to just plain the great depth of education we
provide, which has led so many students and design firms to recommend us to
others. This has grown the school until we probably teach somewhere around
1/2 of the formally trained yacht and small craft naval architects in the
world. All in all having no advertising budget means low tuition.
2) Since we
also run a design firm we have all the same personnel, CAD
workstations, general computers, office space, etc. that we need to run the
school at no additional fixed costs. We could do without the income from it and
support the staff entirely on our custom design work, stock plans and
publications sales. As long as we make enough on the actual working time so
that we aren’t losing money over doing drafting during the same time, we don’t
need to make any more. In contrast the entire cost of staff, equipment, and
office space of other schools must not only be borne by the school but is a
large percentage of their budget. The physical plants of the other schools are
more expensive and ours is humble, but we have no interest in "impressive" plants for
their own sake. We are only interested in whether the plant does what we need
it to do; and with all but a handful of our students being distance learning
students it is hard to see any benefit to the student in investing in a fancier
set of buildings.
3) The school is structured to be extremely scalable, with
all the fixed expenses of the business borne by the design business, and is able
to make money with either a small or large number of students just as easily,
since all the costs are variable costs. Therefore we never have had to worry
about keeping “volume” up to make sure we exceeded some break even point.
Because of this cost structure we are under no pressure to try to force the
growth of the school and thus under no pressure to advertise. This neatly
provides another justification for our avoidance of advertising. In actual fact
we seem to be about the size of a large private college preparatory school or a modest
college in terms of average enrollment.
4) We have a shore office on a beautiful
small coastal Maine island of 3.75 square miles with a beautiful natural
environment full of wildlife on land, in the sea, and in the air. The island is
surrounded by wonderful sailing grounds and the community is very friendly and
supportive. Although Eastport is technically a city, the population is only
1,642 people. Housing, office and other costs tend to be lower here than they
are for our competitors, which have normally been located in larger cities or other very high
cost areas. In this particular area modesty is highly prized and we feel no
need to build fancy buildings or spend money on lavish office furnishings, fancy
cars, and stylish clothes. All of this keeps our costs very low. We
have recently also purchased a 30' double ended pilothouse sloop which
holds personal offices for Nannette and Tom in the summer. This office is even less expensive
than our shore office. I’m sure this
all works out so that the cost structures of all the schools are
perfectly legitimate for their differing philosophies of operation, their
location, and their decisions on promotion. It is doubtful if any differences
in tuition really reflect any differences in educational value. The choice of
school should ideally be made independently of the cost. Nevertheless, we are
pleased with our choices in that the lower cost allows people to pursue an
education in yacht and small craft naval architecture, who otherwise could not
afford to. It does look like for the foreseeable future, though our rates
will naturally rise over time with costs, our students will continue to pay
significantly less than they would at other schools. Back to top.
Can I pay a large amount of money up front, rather than pay by the lesson?
No, we
do not take large advance payments, other than for the "CAD Course", which is
paid for up front. Some
people have gotten educational grants that are supposed to be paid immediately
to the school or have saved up money and want to pay for a considerable portion
of the course at once. However, we have a refund policy which allows
people send back any lessons which have not been corrected at least once.
At times people have paid for the whole course and then later asked for
virtually all the money back. Unlike other schools, which don't do
refunds, we want people to be totally at ease with investing in an education
with us. Part of that is removing significant financial risk for the
student. At the same time refunding large sums, even though it rarely
happens can be a financial strain which can make things difficult for us.
For this reason we encourage orders for no more than two (2) YDS main
curriculum lessons at a time. In this way after mailing in one lesson to
be corrected, the student has another to work on. The student can place a
new order for the next lesson when they are ready to return a lesson to be
corrected. It will then be on the way to them while their completed lesson
is on the way to us so that they will almost always have two lessons in hand to
work on. Further, this way you are sure you are always working with the
latest revision when you pick up the next lesson to start work. Back to top.
Should I do the YDS main curriculum entirely using manual
drafting, entirely in CAD, or some combination of the two?
These
days students work entirely in CAD. These days it is the
best and by far the least expensive choice. CAD is entirely dominant in yacht designing since Rhino came on the scene.
Before then CAD was taking over much more slowly. Today most students choose to take our "CAD Course"
before starting the Main Curriculum and get the software bundle
with it. While it is not a trivial investment, it gets you the core
software for a complete professional design office and the training to use it
right at the start. It is still far less expensive than manual drafting
equipment. Only a few older designers are still using manual
drafting these days and generally only in revising older designs which were
originally done manually. In addition less and less of the critical
equipment needed for manual drafting is still available.
These days CAD is even changing, for the
first time, the nature of the profession. Instead of the builder being
responsible for lofting and pattern production, the designer increasingly tends
to do everything right up to the point where machines or people start to cut
materials to make building jigs or molds. With the growing presence of firms
which will prefabricate interior kits, make molds and mold parts, etc. the role
of the “builder” has become much more that of kit assembler. We are just at the
beginning of this era. A further very important change is that we are
now in an era when a yacht design firm can have a collaborative
system which allows draftsmen to live anywhere they want and be able to access
and work on projects, read supporting documents, and discuss projects with other
members of the design team from anywhere in the world. Using Rhino several
draftsmen and designers can work on the same project with each able to see the
other's work constantly and the chief designer able to make comments on the
drawings and in separate messages constantly as the work progresses. In
this way top design firms may have people working with them all over the world
as long as they have Rhino and access to the Internet.
Though CAD is
now used by everyone it is especially important for people living on a boat or people who are going to need
to work from a wheelchair, reclining chair, or powered adjustable “hospital”
type bed. Further we are finding that students outside the United States
lose enough time on shipping lessons back and forth to make it important for
them to use CAD as all materials can be sent both ways as email attachments. It is
also worth
mentioning it is much faster to correct lessons done in CAD
than those done manually, which has helped keep tuition down.
While we do
not require students using Rhino to take the "CAD Course" as some are able to
learn Rhino on their own due to prior knowledge of CAD, most students are most
happy taking the "CAD Course" first and then proceeding to the Main Curriculum. We have now reached a point where it is hard to
justify not studying CAD. While it would always be possible for a designer
to use entirely manual drafting, the manual tools are slowly disappearing and it
is now almost impossible to equip an office for manual drafting. We have reached a point in the history of yacht
design where, to work for others you will need to know Rhino, manual drafting
skills are now of little interest to most modern firms.. Virtually every
advertisement for yacht designers or yacht draftsmen now specifically mentions
training in the marine uses of Rhino as being a highly sought after skill.
Though these
days students do not use manual drafting much, the basic
mental attitudes and conventions of how you define and conceive shapes and think
about them come from the experience of hundreds of years of manual drafting
development and there are still many times, even when using CAD, that we find
ourselves essentially duplicating the manual methods on screen to make sure we
are getting the results that we want.
All this
means that we want students
to use Rhino. It is now not only the best and most sought after drafting
method, but also the least expensive. In any case the cost of our
curricula and a complete CAD based office is a very low entry fee for such a
wonderful profession.
Do I really need
these tools?
Bluntly, yes. You should buy
the CAD software, which is very inexpensive, especially given our educational
pricing for fully functional packages. Trying to skimp on design tools will
cause the quality of your work to suffer
and the lessons will take much longer to complete. Unfortunately students who still want
manual equipment will not be
able to buy everything new any more and may even have to have some items custom
made at great cost. When you have the recommended software you will have all the tools of a professional office. Back to top.
Do I retain the rights to the designs I do during the course?
Yes. These will form the basis
for your stock plans portfolio and will help ensure that you get a good job. They will
also start you on your way to an independent design income if that is the route
you want to take. Back
to top.
Can I take the course just for my own interest even if I don't want
to become a professional?
Yes. There have been a number
of famous designers who designed primarily for their friends. Albert Strange was an art
instructor and apparently viewed boat design as an offshoot of his artistic temperament.
He designed more or less for his friends and acquaintances. He was, in his lifetime and is
today, well known and viewed with great affection. Dr. Harrison Butler designed quite a
number of very nice boats and simply asked those who had him design them to donate the
design fee to medical research.
You may also just want to study for fun or to build
one boat of your own design. Boat builders may want to design just for their own customers
or want to understand the designs of others. Yacht brokers and surveyors will find the
course vastly increases their ability to excel at their jobs. Back
to top.
What are
the mathematical requirements?
The first lesson tests your
understanding of basic math principles. A fair number of people will find that their
biggest problem is poor math "habits" rather than actual lack of understanding.
While we eventually get into very basic elements of trigonometry and calculus these concepts are more
intimidating in anticipation than they actually are in fact. This is because you will be
learning and applying them in the context of real world applications rather than just
theory. To start with you should understand addition, subtraction, multiplication,
division, decimals, fractions and powers and roots. Most people will have most of this.
The powers and roots sometimes require a little bit of extra help. However they are
essentially simple to learn. While we are happy to teach you everything
you need to know at no additional charge, you may also be interested in learning
from the online video based Khan Academy.
www.khanacademy.org This fully endowed school teaches all levels of
math and some additional subjects at no charge to the student. It includes
many tools for tracking your own progress. You may be interested to know
that it is recommended by Bill Gates of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Back to top.
Can I order
all the lessons at once?
We don't want people
to just order all the lessons and then feel that they can design boats using
this material just as a reference. Expert instructor feedback, guidance, and
correction is vital in learning this material. Therefore, while we do
allow and encourage people to order a lesson or two ahead, we do not want people
to acquire the entire body of lesson materials all at once. Also as we learn more and more about how different students learn or find areas that can be
better covered we rewrite and add material frequently. Therefore it is to the advantage of
students to get the most recent possible version of each lesson. We do encourage students
to at least order the next lesson well before they complete the previous lesson so
that they will have a lesson to work on while waiting for corrections. Back to top.
How
much can yacht draftsmen and yacht designers make?
Entry level compensation for
draftsmen, whether as employees or subcontractors, varies according to two factors. First
is location. Firms in or near large cities often seem to concentrate on large vessels,
hire people with a good portfolio of drawings, and pay more money. However the cost of
living near the cities is higher too. Firms located in beautiful small coastal towns are
fairly common as the location doesn't matter much for many designers of international
reputation. These firms are more likely to have the time to train inexperienced people,
the cost of living is much lower, but the pay is lower too. The second factor is draftsman
experience. If you have taken a course, such as ours, that emphasizes drawing and
aesthetics and the development of judgment in addition to the basic design and
engineering studies, you will have a good portfolio of drawings and can command a higher
starting pay. Normally in each area starting pay for a draftsman will be equivalent to the
median household income for the area. This means as an individual you can normally expect
to have an income better than somewhat more than half the people in your area. This is the
"floor".
For some one starting out to be an independent
designer more or less immediately after graduation the situation is both worse and better.
If you just started "cold" the first year with a portfolio of stock designs from
taking the course with no income from yacht drafting from others to back you up, but with
a web site to promote your work, plus a determination to do some magazine articles and
participate in on-line forums and newsgroups you would make a terrible amount the first
year. Let's just guess and say around half what the average family would make in
a month in the US. The second year I would suspect that you
would do, maybe, half what the average family would make in a year and rise rapidly from there. It is pretty hard to define an upper
limit. After a few years you should be in the same position we are with solid amount of
base income from stock plans sales, plenty of custom design customers, and the ability to
live and work comfortably in beautiful low cost coastal communities. At that point your
income is limited mostly by your promotional abilities and your ability to attract
draftsmen to help you increase your work load if you decide you want to get big.
As you become established, income depends
largely on two factors. First, how many stock plans you have done. This is your base
income. Designers who build up their stock plans portfolios tend to get more and more
money from this source their whole working careers. It amounts to having an income
producing investment. If you think about levels of return for an equivalent level of risk
in the financial markets you will see that stock plans income soon reaches the equivalent
of having a substantial investment portfolio. The second component of design income is
custom design. It is difficult to discover income limits here. It seems to depend mostly
on how big a firm you want to run. As your work list grows you can either raise rates to
reduce the volume of work to something that you can handle or you can run a careful rate
analysis and then take on more draftsmen to take some of the load off you. Probably half
the design firms in the world are essentially one person working alone. A moderate sized
design firm might have 3 or 4 people in it. The largest design firms have up to 8 or 9
people working there. Naturally the principles of these firms are paying much of what
comes in to their draftsmen and much of the remainder on office expenses, and
client communications time, but still as they
add draftsmen they do add also to their own income. Generally speaking few people ever
completely retire from this profession. If you can see, sit up, operate a
computer and
your mind is clear you can pretty much keep on enjoying your work your whole life. We have
also noted that the older designers whom we know all seem to be quite well off. The
profession may be slow to build up your income but expenses are quite minimal and most
designers with good skills make enough to put a significant amount into investments. Back to top.
Occasionally I have heard people claim that yacht designers do not
make much money, is this true?
As near as we can tell this
misconception is purely the opinion of people who have only learned to design
boats. They have never learned, or been taught, to promote their work properly.
They say that you don't earn much designing yachts. What they really should be saying is
that you don't earn anything designing yachts you only earn money when you sell
your design work! This is why we devote a part of the course to teaching what you need to
know to sell your work and run your business. Given knowledge, a determination to do the best job you can for
your customer, and the required ability to promote and sell you should earn a comfortable
living. It is easy to demonstrate with quite ordinary figures that a young designer
starting out earning a minimal amount, living with reasonable frugality, and investing a
modest amount of his or her earnings would, by retirement age, be quite likely to end up a
multimillionaire. This is a strong statement but it is reasonably easy to demonstrate. You
will learn how to do all this in the latter part of the course from a designer who has
made about as many mistakes in promotion and use of money as you can and has come out with
enough knowledge to help you avoid the same mistakes. Back to
top.
What would a
typical career path be?
Graduates or advanced students
would normally be likely to take a job as a draftsman with an established firm. At the
same time most people start working extra hours creating designs under their own names to
sell as stock plans. Work at any particular firm may vary significantly. It is likely that
a junior draftsman may be laid off occasionally and need to switch to another firm. This
normally continues until you become valuable enough so that firms are increasingly
reluctant to lay you off. For our graduates this should be a relatively short period as
you will normally be quite useful to a firm within a relatively short period. At the same time, as you are
becoming more valuable to established design firms, you will probably be earning more and
more money from your own plans sales and it will become less and less urgent to
immediately find another position if you are laid off. Somewhere in this process you may
start getting your own custom design commissions. Eventually some firm will offer you a
partnership, a percentage, or stock to induce you to stay and you will have to make a decision as to
whether you will be happiest in an existing firm or whether you prefer to go
out on your own. Those with extensive experience in sailing, cruising, voyaging, boat
building and boat repair may conceivably greatly foreshorten this process and be running
their own firms very shortly after graduation. This happens more than one would think. Back to top.
Is there
a job placement service at YDS?
We have never had anything so formal as a job
placement service. It is our policy that if a student seems ready for an entry level job
or a graduate should ask for assistance in obtaining a job, we will ask them first if they
have any firms that they would particularly like to work for. If they do we will be happy
to assist them in applying to those firms and will of course make them aware of which
firms have asked us to refer students to them. We also include any firms that we know
frequently need draftsmen. The likelihood of placement in a good job with our backing is
high. Frankly most graduates would be likely to be offered work with MacNaughton Yacht
Designs if they want it. We seem to have a shortage of draftsmen most of the time due to
the large demand for our work. Back to top.
How large a vessel does a naval architect specializing in yacht and
small craft design create?
There is no set size limit. As designs increase in
size you tend to choose slightly different methods and calculation models to best suit the
size vessel designed. Thus the smaller the vessels designed by the large ship specialist
the more they will tend to use the techniques of the small ship specialist. The larger you
get in the yacht and small commercial craft realm the more you will tend to shift to the
formulas and calculation methods of the large ship specialist. We put the emphasis on the
techniques most useful for yachts. For instance the propeller for even a quite large yacht
will cost so little that you cannot afford to spend much time on calculating it's ideal
characteristics. After all if you don't get it exact it will cost very little to have your
local prop shop slightly alter the pitch. By way of contrast we would suppose that the
propeller for a major tanker might cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. In this case an
enormous amount of study time and computer modeling at great expense is amply justified
where it might be more than the cost of the whole design work for even quite a large
yacht. Nevertheless there are some fairly naive opinions out there that yacht designers
just "should" use the same methods as the large ship designers and that the
appropriateness of this should not be examined. Your instructor's design firm at the time
of this writing is working on a 134' passenger carrying schooner design. Do we use
different methods than we would use on a smaller vessel? Of course we do. Yacht Design
School tries to expose you to the underlying theories and principles of naval architecture
and teaches you to choose and apply appropriate methods for the size vessel you are
working on. Back to top.
Do
you still teach manual drafting?
While we still give the
information on using manual tools we don't really teach manual drafting anymore.
You can't get the specialized tools for it and CAD is just plain better and less
expensive using the Rhino software. The three questions
below and the corresponding answers should give you a good over view of how we
teach drafting.
Very few students still want to try manual drafting. Back to top.
Do you
teach Computer Assisted Design?
We stress the usefulness of
CAD in calculations, in hull lines development, and in the complete design
process, we have definitely reached the point where we want
students to work with the Rhino CAD software. Our elective "CAD Course" in using the Rhinoceros(r) design program
& its plug-ins, commonly known as "Rhino", for those who
want to learn the most widely used CAD package for marine design is taken by
most students these days. Learning on
screen design and learning naval architecture are more easily studied sequentially
rather than concurrently.
There is more on how to schedule this below. These days Rhino is
dominant in the yacht design field and is the most complete single package. Remember that learning CAD is not the same
as learning to design anything. CAD is only a tool, you must already have design knowledge
and drawing ability to produce anything. Often the same techniques used in manual drafting are used on the computer to
achieve finer control in developing hull shapes, etc. Thus our decades of
manual drafting skills have proved useful in developing a curriculum for Rhino. CAD is
now essentially dominant. Few design firms still have much interest in manual drafting
skills. In most cases only CAD is practical
today. Also
designers and draftsmen working remotely over the Internet for a design firm
located somewhere else, a
designer confined to a wheelchair, or a designer with handicaps that make it
necessary to work from a hospital type bed are inevitably going to use CAD today.
Since version 4.0 of Rhino came out there has been no doubt that better and more
artistic drawings can be done, and done more efficiently, in Rhino than can be
done manually, once you've been taught how to do them.
Back to top.
Will I have to take your elective courses in Computer Assisted
Design to get work?
While we
don't require you to take the "CAD Course" before going on to the Main
Curriculum, there is no doubt that the "CAD Course" certificate of completion is
valuable when looking for work. Of course the actual drawings in your
portfolio will always be the most important indicator of employability. As
long as your portfolio demonstrates that you have mastered Rhino by some route
that will be the most important thing to employers. There is no doubt that
these days Rhino proficiency combined with good progress in the Main Curriculum virtually guarantees you will be hired.
Demand is high for trained Rhino operators. Other packages may still be a plus
if you already know them but are
declining in importance as Rhino replaces them, and we do not suggest learning
other packages for this industry. We are beginning to hear of boatbuilding firms
which are requiring
everything coming to them to be in Rhino format.
The founders of this school anticipated the use
of CAD about 50 years ago with the help of a work of speculative fiction by Robert
Heinlein. In 1978 we got our first programmable computer and in 1980 our first computer
with a monitor and full alphanumeric keyboard. In the early 80's we worked on lines
development programs and in the early 90's started developing hull lines on screen. We
have always assumed that someday design work would all be done on computer and
our own design work is now being done entirely in Rhino.
These days Rhino is more efficient in creating working drawings with all the
extra artistry in presenting the information that the average client and boat builder needs
in order to produce an emotional response in the clients and craftsmen. This
artistry is very important, unlike some other engineering fields with a
different mindset, because you are very much dealing with people's dreams. They want to
see the line width shading and line art graining, islands in the background, maybe a hint of clouds in the
sky, steaming cocoa on a sideboard, books in the bookshelves, etc. Some designers despise
all this but we say if you can sell thousands of dollars worth of design time by putting
pillows on the bunks, etc., do it! We have noticed that even in the boat shop, practical
though the builders are, they are more confident in, and more enthusiastic about, a
beautiful drawing. Until recently we could
produce drawings with that essential extra visual appeal more quickly by hand.
Now we think the balance has definitely swung to CAD in that if someone wants a
beautiful 2D drawing fast we would think first of Rhino. Also with a design staff spread out over the whole world these days
collaboration over the Internet now demands that our work be done entirely in CAD. If a CAD drawing is accurate
but cold, lifeless, and crude looking you will have great trouble selling your designs.
Fortunately it no longer takes more time to get the visual appeal and detail you need in a working
drawing with CAD. Now CAD is the most cost effective way to get the most
artistry whether in 3D rendered work or 2D working drawings.
So far the
only program that we have found that does both a reasonable job of developing
lines, doing other drawings, and can output artistic looking drawings is Rhino. This is
why we have based our "CAD Course" on it. There are also other
benefits to doing design work in Rhino. For instance though the time to define,
say, a fitting in Rhino might still be about what
it takes to do it with manual drafting. The difference is that you can
then send the Rhino file to a service which will cut a prototype part or pattern
directly from the CAD File. If only one part is needed you go directly
from designing to an automated cutting machine. If you wish to make a
number of identical parts the prototype can be used as a pattern for casting
duplicates or you can use Rhino to produce a file which directly cuts a
permanent mold for casting large numbers of parts.
Back to top.
I already have non-Rhino CAD software. Do you allow use of
non-Rhino CAD in the course?
We have no rule against using
other CAD packages to produce printed out drawings and of course nowadays most students will do most of their
calculations with assistance from a computer of some sort. Nevertheless we judge your
drawings, whether CAD or manual, by their accuracy, usefulness to a builder and salability. If you have difficulty
drawing top quality drawings because of the limitations of your CAD package we will
not grant you any
leeway in grading. If you can't produce visually
appealing drawings with your CAD package you are going to be getting low grades and insistence on
redoes
of the work from us until you can. At this point, with the exception of Rhino, it is very
difficult to torture the major 3D packages into doing good 2D drawings.
Frankly given the very low price of an educational license for Rhino, especially
given that it is a full working version and can continue to be used after you
graduate, it is difficult to see why anyone would want to use any other CAD
software.
If you wish to design entirely on
screen using CAD, we would suggest that you take our "Computer Assisted Design
Course", which teaches the Rhino package. Once you have become expert in the use of Rhino you can
tackle the main YDS curriculum in yacht and small craft naval architecture.
If you are well versed in other CAD packages, you may well
be able to teach yourself Rhino and it will then be up to you to evaluate
whether the quicker learning time provided by the "CAD Course" is cost effective
for you. Back to top.
Should I take the “Computer Assisted Design Course” before, after, or during
taking the YDS main curriculum?
Starting both the study of yacht design and the
study of CAD at the same time would mean learning two deep subjects
simultaneously. You probably should take our
“CAD Course” first and then continue with the main YDS
curriculum. Having said that this is entirely up to the individual and
some have started both simultaneously and made their own adjustments as to
sequence as they went.
If you have a
basic understanding of hull lines, however you acquired it, you should have no
problem with the "CAD Course". If you don’t, you should read at least
“Understanding Boat Design” by Edward S. Brewer or “Preliminary Design of Boats
and Ships by Cyrus Hamlin. Either of these can be ordered through our
Publishing Order Form. We don’t want to make a big thing out of
this. We just mean that the "CAD Course" should preferably not be studied in
total isolation from other sources of knowledge about yacht and small craft
naval architecture as it is really not intended to teach yacht design per se but
rather how to use this “tool” in yacht design.
I have a Bachelor of Science degree from a college that is supposed
to qualify me to practice as a naval architect but I don't seem to be able to get a job in
yacht or small commercial craft design. Would YDS be useful to me?
Yes, our course is often used
as a post graduate degree in Naval Architecture with a Specialty in Yacht and Small Craft
Design. University courses seem to not teach actual drafting and design skills. Nor do
they seem to promote the development of judgment in using theory and calculations. They
are more interested in simply teaching the underlying theory. They tend to assume that
teaching the actual design process and practice of design will be left to your employers.
Unfortunately employers are commonly not primarily interested in your grasp of theory. They
are much more interested in whether you can actually draw boats and handle the
calculations with confidence. In other words they are looking eagerly for
professional school
graduates not people with a "well rounded education". We stress drafting skills,
judgment in use of the calculations and structural analysis formulae, and business and
promotion skills to maximize employability. Back to top.
How do I get experience in dealing with clients while taking the
course?
Frequently the tests allow you
to develop boats of your choice. We are also flexible in allowing substitutions. This
means that with prior permission you can have a friend who is a fellow sailor supply his
or her set of requirements just as a regular client would. This gives you the opportunity
to experiment with trying to fulfill a client's requirements. Also many of the assignments
are phrased as requests from design clients. Since these are drawn from our personal
experience they are at least some help in getting the feel for dealing with clients. Back to top.
Do students ever get work in the field before completing the course?
Actually it is, and probably
always will be, most common for students to get work in the field long before completing the
course. In fact the demand for our students has sometimes gotten extreme
enough that some students are actually being hired on the basis that they have
the knowledge to do at least something the firm needs on the assumption that
they need to get them before someone else does and then push them to complete
the course. It is also possible, and often happens, that a student may get a design commission before completing
the course. We don't actually encourage this but the student who gets one may use it in
the course and get extra help from us at no charge. Of course we have a number of students
who are already practicing naval architects before they even start the course,
but wish to acquire more advanced knowledge. Back to top.
How easy is it to get work in the field and eventually run my own
business?
Most designers whom we talk to
want us to refer draftsmen to them. Many builders, even fairly small ones, have their own
drafting staff as well. The only real problem with the early stages of a design career is
not finding job opportunities but rather that you may have to move frequently from job to
job as work load varies at different firms.
There are very few people in the world who ever
even express an interest in yacht design. In the entire world there probably are rarely
more than 1000 people studying actively at any given time to be naval architects
specializing in yacht and small craft design. If you take all the designers, living and
dead, who ever lived, have designed reasonably good boats, and either have a surviving
body of work or have contributed something to the profession, you come up with only around
750 designers. The number who are active today or whose work is being actively promoted is
really fairly small. In such a small field it is quite easy for a determined person to
work hard and find a niche in which they can stand out and prosper. When starting out
there always seems to be work for good yacht draftsmen except in the middle of a recession
in the area of the world you are working in. To successfully compete is mostly a matter of
working hard, taking time to build up your business, drawing a lot, promotion, and
remembering that your ultimate product is the customer's happiness. Back to top.
To
what extent is naval architecture a men only club?
The highly individualistic
nature of most yacht designers may make acceptance of women easier than any similar
technical field. We have never heard an expression of resistance to women becoming
designers and draftsmen from any designer or design firm. We have a small number of female
students and always have had. Similarly there have always been a small number of women
working in yacht design. It is our belief that any endeavor which cuts out half the human
race is going to suffer for it. We encourage women to take the course and become
naval architects. We would also urge brothers, husbands, sons, and fathers to encourage the
women in their lives to pursue naval architecture if they have an interest. Yachting tends
to become ridiculously testosterone charged at times for no good reason. More women
designing boats would probably help us achieve better design traditions. Back to top.
Where do naval
architects locate?
It used to be that there was a
fair amount of justification for designers living in big city areas where communications
were easier with well-to-do clients. Fortunately nowadays there is little benefit to
living in high cost areas. Communications via the Internet, phone and fax are highly
satisfactory. People love to find their designers living in beautiful small coastal towns
in relatively inexpensive areas. Remember, you never see most of your clients, so there is
little advantage in living in a high traffic, high cost area. Back
to top.
What
kind of designs are most often requested?
1. Ones too large for the customer to afford.
2. Once with too many features to pack into the requested size.
3. Overly complicated ones.
4. Ones with features incompatible with the chosen service. (Mostly
commonly overly shoal boats for offshore use.)
5. Ones that sacrifice good performance to chase fashions that are
confused with technological advances.
6. Ones that sacrifice appearance and investment value to ill conceived
fashion.
7. Ones for production boat builders who refuse to commit to even
minimally safe scantlings.
The above may seem cynical. However, it does stress that a great deal
of the designer's job is educational. In other words your promotional material must
constantly try to lead people to suitable boats with which they will actually be happy.
Back to top.
What
limits are there on where the lessons can be sent and are there extra shipping charges?
We have students all over the planet Earth.
Unless the student wishes to pay extra we now find it most cost effective for
the student for us to send all lesson materials as email attachments, which can
be printed out if desired. If you are in
orbit around Earth and have a good Internet connection we can accommodate you! We do not expect to be
able to offer lessons elsewhere in the solar system for some time.
Back to top.
I attend another school, which will not help me with remedial math, must I
switch to your school?
While we would be delighted to have you, if you are otherwise happy with
your current school, we would be happy to test you and put together an
inexpensive remedial math course that will make sure you can do the work at your
present school.
Back to top.
I attend another school and my instructor says that my drafting isn't good
enough, that they don’t teach drafting, and I should go take a drafting course.
Can you help?
Yes, we can help and we are the best ones to do so since marine drafting
is very different from drawing machine parts or houses, which is what you are
likely to get in community college courses. Since we teach drafting from
scratch, starting right at the beginning of our curriculum, and are really trying
to make you very good at it your best bet is probably to take the Lessons of our YDS curriculum up through Lesson 7. This is actually more than seven lessons
because as the course has evolved we have expanded and divided lessons. Of
course these lessons teach a lot more than drafting. And this amounts to quite
an investment in study beyond just drafting, however it does mean that you will
have most of the skills of an entry level draftsman and we will give you all the
help that you need.
Back to top.
I attend another school and for part of my training they require me to use CAD,
but they don't actually teach CAD. Can you help?
Yes, what you should take is our "CAD Course". This will teach you the in
depth use of Rhinoceros(r), commonly known as "Rhino", the most popular CAD
package in yacht and small craft naval architecture and construction. We also
can supply you with full working copies of Rhino under a special low cost educational
license, which allows you to use the package professionally after completing the
course. Rhino is the only program we know of which you can use for essentially
the entire process of design up to and including producing beautiful working
drawings and, with the aid of Rhino's "Flamingo" rendering plug-in you can even
do beautiful photorealistic renderings for promotion purposes. For technical
illustrations you can use the "Penguin" rendering plug in and you can even do
animations using the "Bongo" plug-in. Rhino and its plug-ins are essentially a
complete CAD design office in a box. To this we have now added the ability
to learn Finite Element Analysis, through the "Scan&Solve(tm)" plug-in for
Rhino. All in all we have a very complete system of instruction in CAD.
Back to top.
Will you teach structural analysis and structural design to a student of another
school, or a practicing designer who never got this training?
Unfortunately many never get adequate training in the basics of materials
science and structural analysis. We believe quite strongly in sticking to
conventional materials science and conventional structural analysis practices.
Unfortunately we cannot reconcile some practices taught elsewhere with these
conventions. Some students at other schools and practicing designers have asked
us for advice on obtaining a better grounding in these areas. There are two
ways to go. It is quite possible to take some courses at a college of
engineering in basic materials science and structural analysis. There are
even ways for a really good self starting student to take these courses at major
institutions for free, through online auditing. We would
caution that it can sometimes be difficult for the student to know how to apply
this information properly to boats, which are an unusual case in many ways. For
those who would prefer to study these disciplines from the first from the point
of view of how they apply to vessels and their components and equipment, we
would be happy work up a separate curriculum of several lessons, based on
several standard engineering texts and material from our main YDS curriculum,
which will give you a good basic grounding in these areas.
Back to top.
Will you
answer my questions if I'm taking a competing course?
We often get students at competing schools contacting us about areas in which
they have found that the curriculum they are taking does not appear to be
preparing them well. Sometimes we can reassure them. Sometimes we
can suggest ways to fill in with courses from local universities or other
institutions. Sometimes of course we suggest taking some of our
curriculum. There is usually a way to fill in the gaps economically.
However beyond advising on how to get the best education in the most cost
effective manner, starting where you are, we cannot really work with you helping
you with your lessons at other schools. We do a lot for students of other
schools, but since general question answering and advice is something we do free
for our students and build the cost of this into our cost structure, answering
questions for students at other schools would raise the costs and therefore the
prices paid by our own students and that wouldn't be fair. We are a
prosperous school with plenty of students. You can trust us to not be
"selling" you in an attempt to gain more students.
Is it
OK for a practicing yacht designer to attend your school?
Yes, certainly. While you will be likely to go a bit faster than some of
our other students, in all other respects you are treated just like any other
student. We normally have several practicing designers taking our curriculum to
fill out and expand their knowledge. We have also in the past taught special
advanced courses on particular subjects to groups of practicing designers who
wanted more knowledge of particular areas. Back to top.
Do you teach multihulls?
Despite what you might think virtually everything we teach applies to both
monohulls and multihulls. There are some special structural questions with
multihulls that are considered later in our curriculum and a few questions as to
appropriate rigs but aside from that those specially interested in multihulls
normally simply choose them as solutions to the design problems set in the
lessons wherever a monohull is not specifically requested and we critique them
as to their suitability and execution of the calculations, drawings, and thought
in just the same detail. Back to top.
May I just order all the lessons and not bother with taking the tests or getting
a diploma?
No you
may not. Occasionally people don’t want to bother with doing the work with each lesson,
but you can’t really learn this material without doing the work and having it
evaluated by experienced instructors. Some have even told us that they would
pay for the whole course if we just sent them the lessons and a diploma.
However this would not be fair. At present every level in our course that you
pass gives you great credibility in the industry because people know that we
really require people to know the material and be able to apply the knowledge
practically before they can go on. If we were to just give out these materials
and diplomas to anyone who would pay for them, they would be valueless as a
measure of competence. This would cheat those who have worked so hard to learn
the material in these lessons.
Further if
people design boats without in depth training it is not just they who suffer the
consequences. If one's training has not been properly evaluated, cross
checked, and directed into the correct paths by experienced designers, people
who bought the resulting designs would also “suffer the consequences”. The
consequences of inadequate design can be, and often are, the loss of both boat
and crew. Without feedback on how well a student is doing in their studies I
don’t see how they can expect to design really great boats.
We don’t say
that there have not been autodidactic polymaths who have been successful in the
industry. However both they and those carefully taking courses and handing in
assignments didn’t get to the point where they were good designers by avoiding
the tough stuff. Rather they worked hard, doing a great deal of drawing and
studying, and consulted with others continuously.
We see our
mission as increasing the average level of knowledge of designers in the world
by turning out the best trained yacht and small craft naval architects
possible. In as deep and subtle a study as yacht and small craft naval
architecture this really requires quite a lot of work even though the work is
not particularly difficult. Traditionally training has not been as high quality
as it can and should be.
We do intend,
at some point, to sell a two volume reference book which will contain all the
basic formulas and methods required by a professional designer. However, even
when that is available it will only be fully useful to someone who has studied
yacht design in depth. Just looking up a formula will not give you the judgment
to use it properly. Further, understanding individual small parts of the subject
may result in falling into error through not being able to integrate all the
knowledge properly. For instance people very often believe that a lower number
of square feet of wetted surface between two boats will always result in less
frictional drag. You need to study all the interrelated factors quite a bit
before you find that actual area of wetted surface is pretty far down the list
of factors that affect frictional resistance.
In light of all this I’m afraid the only way to get all the lesson
materials is to take the whole course.
Why
isn't Yacht Design School advertised in the boating magazines?
Before we started YDS we
referred potential students who contacted us asking about an education in yacht
design to Yacht Design Institute. When YDI was sold to a maritime academy,
its distance learning portion was shut down. The new owners expected to
have entirely residential students. We felt, correctly, that a purely
residential program would not work and that distance learning opportunities were
important. Since we already had people coming to us for help in learning
yacht design, we simply formalized the lessons, drawing our curriculum from our
own knowledge, our own research, and our rather extensive library. At
first each student had such different questions and problems that we re-wrote
lessons to address student needs practically with every student. This took
enough time in those days that we were in no hurry to add more students.
As the lessons became more standardized and needed less revision more and more
students signed up. There seemed little need to advertise.
Eventually the number of inquiries reached the point where information about the
school had to be made available to the public to cut down on the time answering
questions. Therefore in 1997 we put up a web site with in depth
information about the school, what we taught, and how we operated. From
that point on the increase in the size of the school has been such that it is
all we can do train sufficient staff to our level of expertise to keep the
lesson correcting up to date, do additional research, and add new material to
the curriculum as we develop it. Word of mouth, recommendations from
design firms and other students, plus the web site has been enough to bring us
all the students we can handle.
Advertising in the major boating
magazines would at least double the cost of tuition. Since we already get
the maximum number of students and rate of growth that we can handle, keeping the cost down for the
students was the best way to go. Since our primary motivation is to raise
the level of education in our industry, while making sure everyone can afford to
get the best education available, keeping the school inexpensive seems
appropriate.