Automating the Transition of Product Model Data

Product model data is required in different forms throughout a ship’s life cycle. Despite the development of STEP standards for the exchange of model data to support design and engineering throughout the lifecycle of a product, the portions of the standard developed for the shipbuilding industry have not been developed or implemented in a way that would allow for a comprehensive bidirectional sharing of data between all of the CAD packages involved in a shipbuilding program. Identification of relevant data, its transformation, and the validation of its accuracy has proven to be very difficult. The technology proposed here will provide an open, scalable, CAD vendor neutral, expandable framework that will enable the bi-directional transfer of product model data between shipbuilders during the design and construction life cycle phases. Existing STEP standards and commercial open source toolkits will be leveraged to the maximum extent possible to facilitate broad adoption of the technology by the shipbuilding industry. In Phase I, a prototype of the framework will be developed. Realistic test case scenarios will be used to assess the feasibility of the method, identify high risk areas, and define risk reduction strategies which will be implemented in Phase II.