Build 26513824

Hello, ship designers!

NavalArt Hull Designer 1.2.0 is now available. This update focuses on practical surface-armor design and the recurring waits and editing issues found in complex projects.

New-Style Hull Section Groups: Surface Armor Editing

We have added surface armor editing to new-style hull section groups:

• Set armor thickness by face in a dedicated viewport, with brush thickness adjusted at the upper right.
• Armor thickness updates on both sides of symmetric sections.

New-Style Hull Section Groups: Surface-Armor-Only Export

New-style hull section groups now offer a surface-armor-only option. The complete hull remains visible during editing, but export omits that component's internal hull parts and outputs its exterior armor plates instead.

In this mode, zero-thickness regions remain as zero-thickness surface sheets. Curved regions follow their actual sampled surfaces. With the option disabled, normal export rules remain unchanged; existing projects do not switch export behavior by default.

Loading and Local Editing

• Prepare geometry, display, painting and armor-editing data during project loading to reduce repeated waits after opening.
• Reuse validated local results and reduce repeated work during node edits, connections and display updates.
• Improve armor-mode preparation and make viewport button sizes and spacing more consistent.

Large projects and complex concave structures can still take longer to compute. Optimization will continue; this update does not promise instant completion for every operation.

External AI Tool Improvements

• Edit and batch-move section Z positions in both hull-group types, and move multiple components together.
• Set custom connections explicitly as present or absent. Repeating an already-applied state no longer repeats geometry compilation.
• Added section insertion and surface-armor export settings. Coordinate offsets that require review still need user confirmation.
• Improved error explanations, undo and stale-operation protection, with fixes to color and gloss preservation.

After updating, reconnect external AI clients to refresh their available tool lists.

Thank you for continuing to share projects, logs and reproduction steps. Keep independent backups of important designs before updating. Shareable projects and clear steps remain valuable when reporting an issue.

Next Version Preview

For the next version, we plan to introduce spline editing within a plane, giving you a more intuitive way to shape design profiles. We also plan to use these curves to generate and refine designs, making profile adjustments and shape transitions more natural and convenient.