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From: John Winters <jdwinters_at_eastlink.ca> subject: [Paddlewise] Design Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 08:36:51 -0300 · This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:33:38 PDT

PeterO wrote;

> Interesting analysis, though I hope and suspect that like computer
generated
> music, computer designed kayaks will only ever be a small niche market.
Are
> cars designed this way?

Some notes about using computers in design work.

Computers do not design much of anything. I asked mine to design a kayak and
left it on for  week but nothing happened. Turns out you have to do it
yourself. The computer does help with the drawing and calculations though.
It helps if you actually know something about design first since you can
design bad boat faster on a computer just as easily (or maybe more easily)
than designing a good boat..

I think one can fairly say that most things made in industrialized nations
for the mass market (and not so mass market) these days take advantage of
computers at some stage in the design process. The CAD drawings produced
with them provide the information needed for machining and mold making. CAD
drawings provide greater accuracy, faster mold production and more accurate
machining. far from "being a niche" market products designed using computers
have become mainstream.

Computers do not design different boats or better  boats or worse boats than
any other method. People still do the design work. The computer just makes
it easier to do. I  suspect that the majority of kayaks sold in the USA had
plugs or molds made from CAD drawings and machined on CNC machines. These
days CNC machines have gotten ridiculously cheap and people who do that kind
of work seem to have more than they can do. Most of those Stitch and glue
kit boats you see had their designs created on a computer and the parts cut
out on a CNC machine.

Oh, and yes, most cars get born on computer terminals.

> Re modular kayaks, seems we could again learn from the past. I have never
> seen craft so beautiful as the sailing boats built by the Indonesians and
> the Torres Strait Islanders a few centuries ago. Apparently there was
quite
> a trade in dugout hulls which were exported from the Indonesian mainland,
> where hardwood was readily available. They were sold all over the Torres
> Strait Islands where they were outfitted with decks, mast, sails and
rigging
> wonderfully constructed from palm leaf, bamboo and lines woven from hemp.

I don't know about learning it from the Torres Strait islanders but boat
builders have sold hull shells (and other parts) to other builders for as
long as I have worked in the boat industry (since 1960).

They were sold all over the North America where they were outfitted with
decks, mast, sails and rigging  wonderfully constructed from wood,
fiberglass and synthetic lines made from petroleum products. Some even
benefited from products made from hemp.  ;-)

I apologize for that but sometimes I can't control myself.

I suspect a lot of the misunderstandings about the topic of copies stems
from misunderstandings about what constitutes a copy versus what constitutes
derivation. Since even the courts have problems with this it should come as
no surprise.

Few designers have any problem with people designing or building boats that
incorporate certain features that they use in their designs whether
individually or in concert. Many, however, get puckered up when the "new"
boat looks too much like their own. What constitutes "too much"? There lies
the problem. Even if the designers think they know, the courts may not
agree. More importantly you may not find two judges or juries that agree on
the same case.

In a small industry like kayak and canoe building where legal remedies don't
make any sense due to their cost it becomes a matter of individual integrity
and an educated public. If the buying public could learn to respect the
effort that original designers put into the product they enjoy so much maybe
they would reject copies. I have found that most people can recognize a near
copy when they see it especially when they have the original beside it.

Contrary to what we have occasionally read here boats do not get better
because of copies and near copies. They get better when designers and
builders think creatively.

Cheers

John Winters
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