Australian Software Supports Americas' Cup Finalists

Louis Vuitton Cup Finalists Both Designed Using Formation Design Systems Software

Fremantle, WA, Australia - February 1, 2000; Although Australia's entry has been eliminated as a contender for this year's America's Cup, one Australian company is now guaranteed to be on the winning team. All of the teams still in contention for the Cup have used software technology from Fremantle based Formation Design Systems to design their yachts.

During their successful 1995 Americas' Cup challenge, Team New Zealand chose the Maxsurf suite of design software from Formation Design Systems to create their unbeatable Black Magic hull shapes. The Kiwi syndicate have continued their extensive use of the software for their first defence of the Cup.This time around however, the top challengers have taken the same approach in an attempt to neutralise the New Zealander's technological advantage.

Two boats have now qualified for the final of the Loius Vuitton Cup, the event which selects a single challenger for the America's Cup. America One, from the St Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco, and the Italian Prada syndicate have eliminated all other challengers and must now compete for the right to challenge the Cup defenders, Team New Zealand.

Both America One and the Italian Prada syndicate have used Maxsurf extensively in the highly complex design process used to extract the maximum performance from these high tech yachts.

Bruce Nelson, the principal designer of America One said "Maxsurf is a superb program for quickly producing yacht hulls, decks and appendages with high precision and control. Maxsurf is simple to learn and use, yet allows us to create complex three-dimensional models of the hulls and appendages useful for hydrostatic, hydrodynamic and structural analyses of each design and precise CNC fabrication of prototypes."

The designers for Prada, Doug Peterson and German Frers, are both experienced users of Maxsurf. Peterson, who was also a member of the winning design team in the 1992 and 1995 Cup races, says that Maxsurf has been indispensable during their campaign. "Modern Americas Cup design is all about advanced software technology and Maxsurf is the best technology available for creating the hull shape I want".

The Maxsurf suite of software provides designers and builders with advanced Naval Architecture design and analysis tools. Although the Americas' Cup is a showcase for the technology, hundreds of companies around the world use Maxsurf for designing and building all types of marine vessels ranging from oil tankers and container ships to work boats and fast ferries.

Based in Fremantle, Western Australia, Formation Design Systems is a developer of advanced three dimensional design and analysis software. The company is a world leader in the supply of software for Naval Architecture, Ship Design and Construction as well as Structural Engineering. Formation has a long history of success in Americas Cup campaigns starting with the Kookaburra and Stars & Stripes Syndicates in 1987 through to its use by American, Italian, Spanish, Swiss and New Zealand syndicates in the current campaign.

Other products in Formation's suite of three dimensional design software have also been used by Americas' Cup syndicates to optimise their designs. For example, Southern Spars in Auckland, New Zealand is one of the leading designers of the masts and other rigging components that must support the massive loads on the rig during Americas' Cup racing. They have extensively used Formation's Multiframe stress analysis software to perform detailed structural analysis of the loads and stresses in the rigging system and to optimise the design of the cross section profiles of the mast and boom. This software allows the designers to produce colour coded plots of stress and animations of the deformation of the rig during loading.

Formation Design Systems develops computer aided design software systems for naval architects, shipbuilders, engineers and designers. It has over 2000 customers in over 20 countries and supplies software to designers, consultants, builders, educational institutions and defense organizations. Formation customers include the largest shipbuilders and construction companies in Japan, universities such as Stanford, Harvard and MIT, the US and Australian Navies as well as Austal Ships and Incat Designs, two world leaders in fast ferry design and construction.