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those downstream stakeholders and and all the way down to barges.” all of this approach into the cloud to eliminate the drawing from the pro- Though still in its infancy, Ryan really facilitate that exchange and duction process, you save money in is looking ahead … or rather up … make everything easier. We know engineering.” to ‘the cloud.’ “The exciting thing there are security questions, and we is that, starting last year really, we are attacking that with great rigor 3D model integration started moving it from an R&D proj- to make sure that that data is well

The milestone with RAL and Sig- ect into the core process of ABS,” protected. The future is bright for net is just the latest in a succession said Ryan. “We’re starting to move digital class exchange.” of ABS firsts in 3D Model-based

Class. According to the classifica- tion society, ABS was the first to develop a process for ingesting 3D models into class software to allow 3D model-based reviews in 2018.

ABS then became the first classi- fication organization to accept 3D models for class surveys in April 2020. “We are very focused philo- sophically on being flexible, re- gardless of file format, regardless of pure CAD or PLM involvement, effectively making it easy for ev- eryone,” said Ryan. “ABS does not want to dictate to the shipyards what format or what file types they need to submit to us.

We work with those yards, typically in a JDP first, to establish what that exchange process looks like and then we build upon their existing process to make it easy for them, rather than trying to drive the indus- try toward a standard.”

To the Cloud

Watching the 3D process evolve from R&D to the market has been an exciting one for Ryan and his team, and it’s brought along its share of surprises, too, particularly with its broad interest and accep- tance. “What surprised me the most about this is this isn’t a capital ship, this isn’t a major vessel approach,” said Ryan. “I thought the early adoption in this would be in big capital projects that were driven by the high-tier shipyards for hundred- million-dollar projects. That’s not been the case. We’ve seen this (in- terest) across the spectrum, (from) big ships, to patrol craft, to tugs, www.marinelink.com 11

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