Creating the Industry-Wide Virtual Pipe Shop with STEP Software

Subcontracting between shipyards can reduce total construction costs through workload leveling and maximum use of available automated equipment Shipyards are subcontracting piping work now, but only using paper drawings, which adds substantial time delay, costs, and sources of error. For Naval vessels, piping represents more than 25% of ship construction costs. ISO STEP standards exist which can completely define the data needed to manufacture piping. Some CAD systems can export these STEP files now. The problem is that there is no software available for pipe shops to receive and make use of this data. Industrial Planning Technology proposes to solve this system support technology problem with a collection of software tools that: (1) Simplify and speed up pipe fabrication subcontracting by generating complete pipe shop ordering, estimating, scheduling, and control data from STEP piping files. (2) Provide complete high fidelity simulation checking of all pipe shop operations. (3) Add STEP piping import capability to an existing commercial pipe shop direct numerical control system. (4) Provide standard piping data export from the ShipConstructorT CAD package. (5) Provide a generic C++ toolkit to reduce the costs of constructing software that uses the STEP piping data format.