Page 42: of Marine News Magazine (December 2015)

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CAD/CAM DESIGN

ShipConstructor: a New Dimension to Ship Design

AutoCAD-based software for design, engineering and construction in the shipbuilding industry is now ‘a given’ in the yard and in the design shop. A visit with two Canada-based ? rms – RAL and SSI – spells out how and why.

By Kathy A. Smith n today’s digital age, it’s hard to imagine computers off-the-shelf (COTS) applications such as Microsoft SQL not being involved in most areas of any profession, and Server, and can also be connected to numerous comple-

Iwhen it comes to ship design and construction, with- mentary Autodesk products. out purpose-built software that helps speed and streamline the process, costly shipbuilding delays can occur. To that Unique Design: Real Utility end, and for more than 20 years, Vancouver-based naval ShipConstructor is unique in that it has been designed architecture and marine engineering ? rm Robert Allan from the ground up to be 100 percent open architecture

Ltd. (RAL) has been using based SSI’s (formerly known technology. This means there isn’t any part of the pro- as ShipConstructor Software Inc.) products for more than gram that is proprietary – any single piece of information 100 tug and workboat designs. can be extracted and leveraged for whatever purpose the

ShipConstructor, SSI’s ? agship program, is an Auto- user wants. Also unique is the software’s ability to enable

CAD-based software product line created for design, engi- true concurrent engineering, even down to the AutoCAD neering and construction in the shipbuilding industry. The based production drawing level. This means that different program’s AutoCAD foundation provides a globally recog- members of the design and engineering team can work in nized CAD/CAM standard, integrates a common DWG different disciplines concurrently and have changes re? ect- format for sharing information with other commercial- ed to each other. This streamlines the process and is more

Image above: RAL 3200 designed in ShipConstructor Software. (Image courtesy of Robert Allen Ltd.)

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