INTERFACE DEVELOPMENT BETWEEN THE 3D CAD SOFTWARE AND THE STRUCTURAL STRENGTH ASSESSMENT SOFTWARE FOR EFFICIENT

Abstract

As the ship design has been increasing complexity with the need to drive optimization and performance at the same time, the use of various computer-aided software during the ship design process is no longer an option for these days. However, most software basically supports their own proprietary file format which can only be used by their own software, and also requires to reiterate modeling the ship design which had already been used in other software. Often these repetitive works become a major hinder to streamline the design process due to the huge cost of time and effort and may have potential risk for human error. In this regard, interfaces to increase productivity between software for data reusability were developed, but the available data was limited in 2D CAD-based. However, as 3D CAD is adopted in the shipyards, it became possible to access and utilize the 3D modeling data containing various information of the ship design. We have developed the interface function that can carry out hull structural strength evaluation for classification approval very quickly and efficiently based on the 3D CAD model. In this paper, Korean Register (KR) present the interface between 3D CAD software, NAPA Designer, and classification’s structural strength assessment software, SeaTrust-HullScan [1], that can dramatically improve design productivity.