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General HydroStatics
Ship Stability Software |
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Command of the Week
(New or interesting aspects of GHS that you may not know about) |
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50 Years and GHS
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Creative Systems turns 50 this year. GHS, the General HydroStatics software
developed by Creative Systems, is not quite that old. It originated with the
personal computer, which came a little later.
As a young upstart, Creative Systems developed its SCEND mainframe program to serve naval architects with hydrostatics and stability calculations before the PC was born. Some of the concepts proven in SCEND were carried over, so the exact age of GHS is not something we know how to calculate. Beginning in 1972, Creative Systems soon grew from one to two, at which point it could rightly be called a company. With six full-time employees now in 2022 we look back and marvel at the small beginning. There was never an investment from the outside: GHS was built here from the ground up. It's design is unique, and all of the computer code is generated in house. There is a competitor who has license to use some of the GHS code, but GHS never emulated other software. Somehow the world likes the systems we have "created" by the grace of God. We have a long queue of ideas and prototypes that will enhance and expand our products, so the name Creative Systems continues to fit well. But this is supposed to be about a command -- the Command of the Week -- which makes the foregoing a digression. Our command of this week is GHS, which happens to be the same as the name of the overall program. There is a reason for that. HS, a related command, produces a report of "pure" hydrostatic properties independent of the center of gravity. The GHS command includes CG-dependent results such as GM and moment to trim. Below is an example of a set of curves coming out of the GHS command. |
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| Notice the anomaly at the 10-foot draft in the waterplane-related properties. Quite likely there is a defect in the geometric model that causes this. Checking the hull component, we find it sufficiently dense with stations. So what could it be? It turns out that the ramp component, which deducts from hull, has a rather sparse station spacing. After addressing that with Section Editor and its FILL command, the bumps disappear: |
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| Even if you don't need the GHS-command curves, you have here a useful technique for checking geometry. We expect GHS will continue to be a useful command for the next 50 years. |
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Questions, comments, or requests?
Contact Creative Systems, Inc. USA phone: 360-385-6212 Fax: 360-385-6213 Office hours: 7:00 am - 4:00 pm Pacific Time, Monday - Friday Mailing address: PO Box 1910 Port Townsend, WA 98368 USA Click here for an index to this and previous COWs |