Feature 4 | CAD/CAM
Foran and Tribon move into the third dimension
Marine projects demand sophisticated design, resulting in staggering amounts of data and documents, complex schedules and huge quantities of materials and resources, with engineering teams being able to make full reuse of past designs, and rapidly create and validate new designs to maximise the efficiency of vessels and their production process.
T
o achieve this, designers require applications
that include instrumentation, electrical and piping
schematics and all aspects of hull design and outfitting, which must be tightly integrated with the planning and production disciplines used throughout the project lifecycle. The multi-disciplinary nature of engineering and design means that most shipyards employ a wide range of 2D and 3D design applications, from a host of different soſtware suppliers that provide little or no operational integration. In other industries, such as automotive or
aerospace, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) tools and techniques, incorporating 3D stereoscopic visualisation or Virtual Reality (VR) are the norm. Initially just used by designers for real-time design reviews, VR technology soon spread to training and assembly. VR specialists, Virtalis, first entered this arena over twenty years ago when Vickers (now part of BAE) sought to replace the physical prototype for its submarine designs. At that time, the demands placed on computers by models of this size meant that the 3D visualisation had to be hosted on costly mainframe computers and operated by a small, highly trained team, housed in a specialist department located at some distance from the dock halls.
Virtalis’ Tribon adaptor has allowed models created in Tribon to be easily translated into PTC’s DIVISION MockUp without any loss of data or formatting.
Virtalis has gained experience from working of large projects such as the Type 45 Frigate. Five years ago, BAE Systems Submarines,
aware of the technological advances in visualisation, approached Virtalis to design and install a network of assembly-only VR pods. Tese revolutionary, self contained pods were strapped to the side of the submarine fabrication building and were manned, almost round the clock, not by computer specialists but by welders, electricians, fitters and representatives from other manufacturing trades. Te Virtalis development team has worked
with numerous massive data sets over the years, from the Type 45 Frigate for the Royal Navy to whole chemical plants and geospatial terrains. Tis has given the team expertise in dealing with not only the enormous virtual models, but also with a wide range of different CAD soſtware providers. Uniquely, Virtalis has development agreements in place with all the industry leaders, including PTC, Dassault Systèmes, Siemens and Autodesk. However, the driver for the creation of a
VR soſtware adaptor that seamlessly exports data created in AVEVA’s Tribon into PTC’s DIVISION MockUp and Virtalis’ Visionary Render came in the form of Virtalis’
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Chinese agents, the Shanghai-based RBD Computer Technology Company, who understood the potential of 3D visualisation within global shipbuilding. Jacky Zheng, RBD’s sales and marketing
manager, commented: “Most companies have their own VR facilities and the two most commonly used soſtware packages are Tribon and MockUp. However, we identified that moving data between these packages was no simple matter. Everyone seemed to have the same headache. Tankfully, we discussed this with Virtalis technical director, Andrew Connell, last year and he and his team have created the ultimate solution to this previously intractable problem.” AVEVA dominates the shipbuilding industry, with 43 of
the top 50 global
shipyards relying on its soſtware solutions. The acquisition of the market-leading Tribon Soſtware in 2004 provided AVEVA with expertise in the creation of design and production information for shipbuilding. Te first installation of the Virtalis Tribon
Adaptor was at Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Company Limited, a leading Chinese
The Naval Architect January 2012
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