By Hu Tao, CCS Shanghai Rules & Research Institute

Promoting digital shipbuilding is an important choice for the Chinese shipbuilding industry to improve its competitiveness . Based on the knowledge fusion of ship construction process, with characteristics of digital modeling,simulation and optimization, the digital shipbuilding is to fully apply information technologies into the whole process of ship design, plan approval, manufacturing, inspection,management, operation  and decision -making, so as to achieve the purposes of improving production efficiency and reducing cost . Digital development  promoted the  improvement  and popularization  of  3D ship technologies, and also brought  about  necessary demands  for  3D  design and plan approval .

Current Status of 3D Technology Application in the Ship Industry

1. Current status of 3D technology development at home and abroad

In recent years,  shipbuilding powers represented by developed European countries, Japan  and Korea have successively started to adopt 3D design and modeling. In

aspects of information integration and sharing, they used product data management systems and achieved parallel cooperative design and production .In the aspect of manufacturing, they applied virtual manufacturing technologies into production practice and realized digital simulation of the production procedure before manufacturing.

Domestic  ship enterprises pay great attention to the information-based transformation work . From 2015, key domestic shipbuilding enterprises and design organizations have set out to research and explore application of 3D technologies in the field of ship design . With the rapid improvement of China’s shipbuilding capabilities, most Chinese ship enterprises have performed digital transformation and 3D technology research and application independently . However, limited by

the reasons such as different institution and mechanism and different technical development levels, the digital research strength of ship industry in China is dispersed and cannot make full use of its overall capability .

2. Main efforts of domestic ship industry digitalization

Based on the current status of digital development of domestic ship industry, the following three aspects should be enhanced in future . First, in digital design of ships, CAD/CAM based on 3D models has been applied, but the information carrier between the design and plan approval links at each stage is still 2D drawings (data), so it is necessary to improve the 3D design and plan approval capabilities in the whole process of ship design, plan approval and construction as soon as possible,and enhance the application of CAE in design and construction .Second, the ship design and construction organizations generally adopt an organizational structure of separated factories and institutes, and their cooperation are mainly realized by 2D drawings (data); so, the value of 3D should be fully used to improve the digital continuous transmission capability,achieve the drive of a single data source, and improve the work efficiency . Third, it is to strengthen the research and development of 3D data standards of ships, and improve the digital service capabilities in the full life cycle of ships .

Development Trends of Digital Three-dimensional Plan Approval

In the next 10 to 15 years, ship technologies will develop rapidly with the aid of advanced shipbuilding ideas and modes such as intelligent, green and lean production, as well as new technologies such as automation, digitalization, new materials  and  virtual  simulation .  Facing  the  technical development trend of intelligent and integrated ship design in future, the integration and collaboration of ship design and plan approval will become an inevitable demand for development of the ship design technologies to shorten the full cycle of ship design and construction . Users are eager for maximum check information support of plan approval in design, so as to reduce the number of iterations between ship design and plan approval, thus  shortening the work cycle . 3D plan approval is an important premise and basis to achieve 3D digital model  sharing and intelligent  ship design, building and maintenance in the full life cycle and construction procedure of ships, and is also an important link connecting 3D design and manufacturing in the software platform system of the ship industry .

The core ideas and development objectives of 3D digital plan approval include: driven by a single data source, breaking through links  of design, plan  approval  and production,achieving data sharing and reuse, reducing the number of iterations in various links of the full life cycle of ships, and maximizing the production efficiency .

CCS's Research and Prospect of 3D Plan approval Technologies

1. Current status of research on 3D plan approval technologies

Since  2020,  CCS has  conducted technical research and application exploration of 3D plan approval . Through surveys of more than 20 domestic large shipyards and design organizations, it is shown that 3D design platforms of domestic ship industry application are mainly NAPA Designer, 3DE,AM,  SPD etc . ,  and  application  scenarios include detailed design, production design,production management, and so forth . Entire 3D integration from design to production of the domestic ship industry has not been realized fully . Considering from many aspects such as application technology difficulty,production efficiency and shipowner demands,3D design is adopted in production and design maturely, but many construction sites still use 2D drawings for expression, i .e . exporting 2D drawings from  3D models .A part of shipyards are applying 3D models into workshops to replace 2D construction drawings gradually . At the stage of detailed design, although most of design organizations and shipyards have not realized entire 3D integrated design yet, they expect that the classification society can provide corresponding 3D plan approval services to reduce their work amount of 2D drawing, achieve data sharing of computation models, and improve the efficiency of submitting plans for approval .

In 2021, CCS proposed the “technical service system architecture based on 3D environments”, aimed to develop “independent and controllable” data standards and data adaption interfaces, build 3D plan approval platforms with independent intellectual property rights, and connect plan approval based on 3D models to various links such as design, production, manufacturing,operation and maintenance . Shipowners, shipyards, designers and classification societies can perform review check and opinion interaction based on unified 3D models, so as to efficiently reduce the number of iterations of each link, shorten the ship design and construction cycle, scientifically control manufacturing cost, and improve production efficiency.

2. Application and expansion of 3D plan approval technologies

CCS  puts  forward  the  3D  plan  approval  platform construction idea of “3D model application as the core” .Through compatibility with mainstream 3D model data of domestic ship industry, it achieved 3D model data transmission of design and plan approval links through conversion interfaces,and transformed the models into data that can be used for rules computation, evaluation analysis and review check, and thus achieving data sharing and transmission . “Taking process and data management as the core”, the 3D plan approval platform effectively uses a single data source to achieve highly- efficient coordination of design and plan approval, scientific management and scheduling of plan approval projects, real-time interaction of plan approval opinions, etc . The 3D plan approval platform will fully utilize  such advantages as openness, compatibility and integration, and use new technologies such as blockchain and digital twin to extend the service towards front and back ends . At the same time of realizing collaborative design, the model data can also provide technical support for construction, inspection, operation and maintenance, achieving “multiple purposes by one model” .

On the whole, large shipyards with abundant resources, leading technical capabilities and high integration of factory and institute have made greater research efforts with better application effects; large ship design institutes performing detailed design and production design at the same time with prominent technical capabilities also have better application effects of 3D technologies; in most of general-scale design organizations and shipyards, the application of 3D technologies is still at the research and exploration stage . As an important link that connects design and manufacturing, the 3D plan approval service of CCS will become an important and key application field of 3D technologies .