Technology-based design brought the US monohull sloop, AmericaOne, within a whisker of competing for yacht racing's most prestigious trophy - the America's Cup. Tied at four races each with her Italian rival, Prada Challenge, in a best-of-nine races qualifier, AmericaOne was eventually eliminated from the competition in the deciding race of the America's Cup qualifier. The regatta was raced off Auckland in February. Prada went on to challenge Team New Zealand for the America's Cup 2000.

The AmericaOne syndicate, which built two lightweight carbon-fibre sailboats costing about $2 million each for its America's Cup campaign, based its design effort on an AutoCAD platform from Autodesk, a leading PC-based design software supplier. The designers also used Autodesk's Volo View Express Internet collaboration tools to help them share drawings with design team members located around the world. The design team comprised 40 naval architects, fluid engineers and yacht designers who collaborated with crew members and boat builders located in New Zealand and California.

Typically, the design process of a boat handled is serially, starting with a hull model, to which a keel is added, and finishing with a sail. Internet-based collaboration tools allowed the design team to share design data and work concurrently on multiple aspects of the design, striking the most efficient a balance between the various components: the power source of the sail, the ballast of the keel, and the drag of the hull.

"The America's Cup is considered yacht racing's Holy Grail," says Errol Ashwell, Managing Director of Autodesk Africa. "Although participants do not compete for prize money, racing syndicates spend tens of millions of dollars mounting campaigns to either defend or challenge the America's Cup and prove their technological supremacy at sea."

Visit www.autodesk.com/americaone for design facts about AmericaOne.

Autodesk Africa

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