6D buoys: Spar buoy and towed fish drawing

Spar buoys and towed fish may be drawn in one of two ways in a wire frame 3D view.

Draw square cylinders. Each cylinder is drawn as a square-based cuboid. OrcaFlex automatically generates the vertices and edges. There are eight vertices per cylinder and the square base has a side length equal to the outer diameter of the actual circular cylinder. Hollow cylinders do not have their bore depicted.

Draw circular cylinders. The circular cylinders are drawn as such, with separate pens for the outside and inside of the cylinders. An (editable) number of lines are drawn in the axial direction to represent the cylinder surface: increasing this number makes the buoy drawing more realistic but increases the time taken to draw the buoy.

The buoy calculations are entirely independent of the choice of cylinder drawing method. In general, you may find that circular cylinders give a more natural presentation. The vertices of the square cylinders, however, correspond to those used for calculation of any contact with the seabed or shapes (even if you choose to draw circular cylinders); drawing square cylinders can, therefore, be helpful in understanding the buoy behaviour in these circumstances.