Page 30: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (September 2002)

Naval Architecture • Marine Engineering

Advances in CAD and CAM System Integration

Over the past 25 years CAD and CAM have become a vital part of shipbuilding.

The individual tools have evolved into highly capable products of today. This has included the change from 2-D to 3-

D CAD, a dramatic increase in the level of usability (example: from batch mode to fancy 3-D GUI's) and increased func- tionality within the tools themselves.

With the development of these tools has also come improved integration of the CAD and CAM data. While 2-D

CAD drawings were originally entered into the CAM system manually, it has now become commonplace to utilize a fully integrated product model environ- ment from vendors such as Dassault

Systems (Catia), Intergraph (ISDP),

Nupas-Cadmatic, Sener (Foran) and Tri- bon Solutions (Tribon Ml).

Even today, some current installations utilize a complete 3-D product model for the design of a system such as pip- ing or HVAC, but then create a paper drawing to transfer data to the produc- tion (CAM) system.

CAD and CAM integration has always been a primary problem for U.S. shipbuilders. U.S. naval shipbuilders have tended to use general-purpose mechanical CAD systems such as

CADDS or CATIA because of their exceptional 3-D model viewing capa- bilities.

An Integrated Solution

Because these systems lacked ship- building CAM capabilities, they had to be combined with separate shipbuilding

CAM systems such as AUTOKON or

SPADES. Few options were open as to how to integrate these CAD and CAM systems, and yards have normally creat- ed the connections themselves by writ- ing dedicated custom interfaces. These interfaces must then be maintained by the shipyard (or sub-contractor) and be modified to accommodate software Voltastraat 3, RO. Box 23 8600 AA Sneek Holland

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In general European shipyards have tended to utilize shipbuilding specific

CAD/CAM systems such as Tribon,

Foran and Nupas. These systems pro- vide an integrated CAD/CAM solution as part of a single system. Such mono- lithic systems utilize proprietary data architecture, to provide seamless links between the two systems. In this case the shipyard is tied to a single vendor and may have to compromise on the available features in one part of the sys- tem in order to have the desired features of the other part. Additionally, many shipyards implemented the sole source vendor's products while they were in the early stages of product development and were left to create many custom interfaces to other shipyard systems themselves.

Up until now, major Japanese ship- builders have employed either their own homegrown systems such as Mitsubishi

Heavy Industry's MATES or specialized shipbuilding CAD/CAM systems such as Tribon. Like their European counter- parts, the Japanese put more emphasis on CAM and production than the U.S. yards, which, as mentioned, tend to emphasize model viewing.

Regardless of the type of configura- tion, once the shipyard finally gets all of its connections in place, little flexibility remains to adopt new. improved prod- ucts or practices. In order to make

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Meets the Toughest Standards. • High Starting Loads.

Electric, air or hydraulic. • Extensive range of sizes • Mountings to configure to existing foundations.

Send for our catalogue for full details! _ JeamarWincfies 1051 Clinton Street, Buffalo, New York, U.S.A. 14206 web site: www.jeamar.com • Email: [email protected] Toll Free: Tel: 1-877-884-8118 • Fax: 1-877-569-9909

Circle 247 on Reader Service Card or visit www.maritimereporterinfo.com 30 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News