This course is offered during the Independent Activities Period (IAP), which is a special 4-week term at MIT that runs from the first week of January until the end of the month.

Course Highlights This class is jointly sponsored by the MIT Museum, Massachusetts Bay Maritime Artisans, the Department of Mechanical Engineering's Center for Ocean Engineering, and the Department of Architecture. The course teaches the fundamental steps in traditional boat design and demonstrates connections between craft and modern methods. Instructors provide vessel design orientation and then students carve their own shape ideas in the form of a wooden half-hull model. Experts teach the traditional skills of visualizing and carving your model in this phase of the class. After the models are completed, a practicing naval architect guides students in translating shape from models into a lines plan. The final phase of the class is a comparative analysis of the designs generated by the group.

Course Homepage 2.993 Special Topics in Mechanical Engineering: The Art and Science of Boat Design January (IAP) 2007

Course features at MIT OpenCourseWare page:

• Syllabus
• Readings
• Assignment
• Image Gallery
• Download Course Materials

Course will include:

• Visits to MIT Museum Hart Nautical Collection Half-model Room, and Plans Collection
• Overview of Evolution of Boat Design Technology
• Introduction to Carving Tools and Techniques
• Introduction to Techniques for Taking Offsets from Half-models
• Introduction to Techniques for Drafting Lines Plans
• Explanation of How Builders Used Lines Plans
• Introduction to Methods of Analyzing Drawn Lines Plans
• Discussion of Strength and Weaknesses of Different Design Technologies
• Discussion of Thought Process Involved in Designing Boats-using Intuition to Consider the Hull Form in a Dynamic State
• Discussion of Iterative Process in Developing Designs-in CAD as Well as Half-model Design Methods

Complete MIT OCW video collection at MIT OpenCourseWare - VideoLectures.NET