Page 45: of Marine News Magazine (August 2014)

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learn a lot about the “black art” of propellers. Suddenly the company found it had fi lled a niche and shelved plans for everything else, focusing exclusively on applied hydro dynamics.

NavCad is an integrated tool for resistance and propul- sion and propeller sizing. PropCad is a geometric modeler tool that creates drawings and numerical documents for export to 3D CAD/CAM for creating custom and semi- custom designs.

Hydrocomp succeeds in part because it is a company of engineers who have learned to program. They under- stand their users on a level that generic software developers can’t. McPherson’s guiding maxim is that behavior always trumps performance. “You never want to have a case where it works great nine out of 10 times and works awfully that one time. That’s expensive. Our goal is for the software to be as bullet-proof as possible, and well behaved.”

TRANSAS

The reigning market leader in marine simulation, Tran- sas has been a technology leader virtually from the start, when it entered the market with the industry’s fi rst PC- based application. “When we fi rst introduced ‘sim’ to the industry, competitors thought we were crazy thinking that the power of the PC could serve the needs of these schools and large simulation complexities. Now every manufactur- er in the world utilizes the PC,” said George Toma, presi- dent and general manager of Transas USA.

Transas today is the biggest provider of full-featured simulation systems for professional training and certifi - cation to the marine community. It also provides a range of onboard navigation equipment, electronic navigation charts and data base systems, and port and vessel traffi c management systems. It claims to hold 45% of the com- mercial maritime simulators market, 40% of the electronic navigation systems market, and its onboard equipment is used on more than 13,000 commercial and other vessels “When we fi rst introduced ‘sim’ to the industry, competitors thought we were crazy thinking that the power of the PC could serve the needs of these schools and large simulation complexities. Now every manufacturer in the world utilizes the PC.” – George Toma, President & General

Manager, Transas Americas Inc. www.marinelink.com 32-49 MN Aug14.indd 45 7/18/2014 1:36:40 PM