A strategic partnership between DNV Software and Intergraph resulted in the time-saving application Nauticus Early Design, based on Intergraph's SmartMarine 3D.
In early 2002, DNV Software and Intergraph Corporation entered a strategic partnership for the development of early design marine analysis tools and a 3D development framework.
Nauticus Early Design is one of the results of this partnership; it is based on Intergraph’s SmartMarine 3D® engineering solution. This 3D modelling tool uses Spatial’s 3D Acis® as its modelling engine, well suited for developing applications with hybrid modelling capabilities.
SmartMarine 3D supports wireframe, surface, and solid modelling functions and operations, and enables users to begin modelling for early design activities and proceed through the entire engineering design and production life cycle through a process of continual refinement of the model.
A key feature of SmartMarine 3D is its ability to allow users to begin modelling with an approximated hull form surface definition and then replace the hull form with a more accurate or refined surface at some later stage of the design process.
An approximate hull form can be used to quickly develop a model for bidding and/or estimating purposes; this same model could be refined through the replacement of the hull form definition with a more accurate definition – possibly reflecting the results of modelling testing, seakeeping or motion analyses, or fairing – later in the design cycle. This is done without having to start a new model or lose the investment made in the engineering design.
One of the first activities necessary for beginning a marine design project is to generate a model of the vessel’s hull form. Traditional approaches made use of 3D wireframe definitions that fed analysis tools based on numerical methods to interpolate and calculate points and curves on the hull form at locations other than the input wireframe data.
Next-generation products, like Nauticus Early Design and SmartMarine 3D, are based on a 3D surface definition of the hull form that accurately and completely defines its shape.
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These tools are based on an ‘open architecture’ that enables customers to use the naval architecture design tool of their choice rather than forcing them to adopt or use a new tool – that is, it enables them to select the best tool for their organisation. While this approach offers the most flexibility, it presents challenges in that data comes in a wide variety of ‘flavours’ and from a wide variety of sources – e.g. naval architecture design firms, model testing facilities, owners or shipyards.
To facilitate this process, a series of guidelines and modelling approaches has been developed to outline and summarise the requirements to be considered when developing hull form models intended for use in Nauticus Early Design and SmartMarine 3D. These are summarised below:
- Coordinate System must be right-handed – can be either forward pointing or aft pointing
- Openings should not be modelled in the hull form surface
- Model geometric tolerance 1x10–6 metres between adjacent patch edges
- Knuckles must only occur at patch edges
- Recommended size is between two and three Mbytes
Because of the variety of tools that can be used to define a hull form surface, and due to the differences in their underlying mathematical engines, DNV Software and Intergraph have developed tools and training materials specifically targeted at helping customers either develop the hull form models or check and validate the models created by third-party tools or partners.
Recently, DNV Software conducted a user workshop focused on understanding and streamlining the process of developing, validating, and importing the hull form into Nauticus Early Design. Once this process is defined and optimised to the organisation’s workflows, the activity of importing hull forms becomes a predictable, short-lived operation that allows the user to quickly move on to the tasks of developing the engineering model to feed the analysis, estimating and planning activities.
Anyone interested in more information on this topic should contact DNV Software or Intergraph.
Author: Michael A. Polini,
SmartMarine 3D product manager,
Intergraph Process Power & Marine
Date: 13 November 2009