When your organization has the right tools and information throughout the design, build, and ship maintenance processes, it becomes a powerful competitive advantage. At every stage of the shipbuilding process, you should be able to seamlessly integrate data from any other source, work within industry specific standards and rules, and output accurate documentation as needed. With SSI ShipConstructor, the world’s leading shipbuilders gain immediate ROI – on every project, or even on the current block about to be cut – thanks to intelligent design integration and seamless collaboration from engineering to production.
Seeing a quick ROI also means getting up and running quickly, without lengthy training times or delays caused by unfamiliar or unoptimized tools. Getting up to speed quickly plays an especially crucial role when it’s time for your organization to adjust to market demand. Being able to trust that no matter what level of experience your workforce has or where they’re located, your ability to accept a new project with confidence will not be jeopardized.
The reality of global shipbuilding means that professionals who work on design, engineering, and construction can be in many different parts of the world. Working with a team that’s distributed brings additional challenges of securely connecting other organizations, departments, tools and processes to your projects. When you’re able to trust that your information is secure, that your entire organization is trained and ready to go, and every department has access to the right information at the right time, then you’re able to truly focus on shipbuilding.
No matter what workflow you are used to, what platforms are used within your shipyard, or what types of projects you take on, the solutions you implement need to be shipbuilding specific and adapt to what works best for you. Together, our suite of ShipConstructor Hull/Structure, Outfitting, and WorkShare products allows you to focus on what you do best – shipbuilding.
Hull / Structure Products
With a purpose built shipbuilding solution, the concepts, terminology, and functionality required for hull and structure modeling, basic and detailed design, and the engineering of blocks, parts, are included out of the box. That industry specific focus makes ShipConstructor a natural fit for your organization.
Shipbuilding-specific surfacing technology and the simplicity of working inside of AutoCAD
Hull allows for easy and intuitive creation and manipulation of complex surface models while also allowing the freedom to use standard AutoCAD drafting techniques. Hull provides powerful features such as surface-surface intersection, surface trimming, plate expansion, structural section definition, shell expansion, shell stringer definition, offset book printing, and pin jig drawing generation. The data designed in the external hull production model flows freely into the Structure product.
Rapid 3D production detailing of internal hull structure
Structure combines aspects of both associative and parametric 3D modeling but is tailored specifically to the design of ships and offshore structures. Accurate and intelligent 3D project models can be created very quickly utilizing a cross section of shipbuilding specific capability and native AutoCAD tools.
Production and management system for structural welds
WeldManagement provides the ability to fully customize weld symbols and standards. It also provides the ability to develop a weld schedule for each particular project. Once welds have been defined in the project (including automatic identification and weld path generation) configurable weld reports can be generated for any assembly, or for the entire project.
Optimize stock utilization and streamline production
Nest provides features to nest by assembly, stock, material, surface treatment, port/starboard, like/mirror cut, and full remnant control. Nest provides standard tools to align parts and insert bridges. Nest also performs linear nesting of profiles onto available stock to optimize utilization and streamline production, including available and used stock control, heat number tracking, and full production reports.
Drive any NC-cutting machine
NC-Pyros reliably creates NC-Code for any type of NC-cutting machine: oxy-fuel, plasma, laser, water-jet, or router. The integration with the product model automatically feeds back important information such as estimated cutting time, processing date, and operator name. This completes report data and simplifies any recalls. NC-Pyros-Bevel allows for adding variable angle cut and multi-torch weld preparation to NC-Pyros.
Outfitting Products
Your team needs to be able to complete accurate outfitting models in a way that works best with your existing workflows. Moving seamlessly to the outfitting stage, minimizes rework and can fundamentally impact how your design and engineering teams approach a project. ShipConstructor Outfitting offers a complete set of tools for piping, HVAC, electrical, equipment, penetrations, production detail reports, and build strategies.
Complete production design solution for pipe systems
Pipe is a complete production design package for pipe systems. Its pipe modeling capability is spec-driven based on a user-defined parametric catalog of pipe stocks and standards with logical connections between parts in the model. It features a powerful constraint-based modeling system which allows intuitive changes to existing piping systems. Pipe spools can be defined which are carried over into production for the creation of spool drawings and inclusion in the build strategy for pre-outfitting. The ability to generate support fabrication drawings linked to the model provides a smooth transition from engineering to production.
Complete production design solution for HVAC systems
HVAC (Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning) integrates with all of the other ShipConstructor modules and encourages collaboration between departments. HVAC can be based on a parametric catalog of stocks or can be driven by on-the-fly item creation depending on the client’s needs. The software employs the same constraint-based modeling engine used in Pipe.
Complete production design solution for electrical systems
Electrical is a 3D modelling and production system for wireways, cable trays, supports, cables and transits. It features an associative 3D model connecting allocated space to individual wireways, cable trays, supports and subsequent cables. Associative production documentation can be generated from the model including cable pull schedules and reports. The cables within the model are automatically routed within the ShipConstructor environment according to EMC ratings, minimum bend radius and more.
Intelligently create penetrations
Penetrations allow the creation of intelligent penetrations through structural members. The parametric spec-based penetration standards support features such as multi-pipe (and HVAC) penetrations and penetration accessory items.
WorkShare Products
Every modern shipbuilder has, to a certain degree, to work with professionals in different parts of the country, or the world. As a result, distributed teams are becoming increasingly common to see within shipbuilding organizations. Finding a way to ensure that teams in disparate locations, with different skills and abilities, can work on the same project and manage information regardless of format is key to making it possible to focus on shipbuilding. Even when a project takes place in a single location, being able to share and reuse already completed blocks, assemblies, and other completed work with other ships in a series allows your organization to tackle one of the toughest challenges in shipbuilding. Transferring data across hulls and projects can fundamentally improve the traditional workflows in place.
Connect distributed teams
WorkShare Teams is an additional solution to support distributed teams that share ShipConstructor work on a common project. WorkShare Teams provides real-time access to a ShipConstructor project across multiple geo-locations. Compared to remotely connecting to the project through a VPN or Remote Desktop, distributed teams will see greatly improved performance, including:
- Faster generation of Reports.
- Faster updating of BOMs.
- Faster updating of Production Drawings.
- Faster loading of XREF’s.
- Reduced load on the project server.
Manage change across hulls and sister ships
When collaboration across organizations is involved, the challenge of managing those changes is compounded, even when working on a single hull. With the new, built from the ground up, WorkShare Transfer feature, you can save time by selecting only the items you need and transferring them directly to the other project, allowing you to re-use the exact work required on-the-fly. Now, you’re able to transfer parts, production drawings, assembly information, systems, and profile plots between projects. Updating and synchronizing projects to facilitate change order requests now takes just minutes, in part because there is no need to disconnect users from the project to do so. Transfer is already being incorporated into critical workflows on some of the most complex classes of ships. As a result, these firms are minimizing rework and producing deliverables more quickly thanks to their access to this fast and efficient sister ship solution.
Collaborate across the world
WorkShare Project allows work on a single ShipConstructor project model at multiple locations. This is accomplished by using technology to merge distributed design back into a single 3D project model.
Re-use more of your project
WorkShare Design allows portions of a 3D project model, including assembly sequences, related production drawings, and the underlying design intent to be captured and reused in another ShipConstructor project.
Share or transfer individual parts
WorkShare Model allows you to transfer individual parts across different projects. This allows you to replicate elements of the 3D model at granular level of detail or share those elements to necessary stakeholders.
General Products
Throughout the entire shipbuilding process, certain realities hold true. It is always critical to visually understand the model you are working with, work with drawings in a way that fits your workflows, manage equipment efficiently, report on progress, and understand your build strategy. These tools help you do what you do better, no matter what part of the lifecycle your project is in.
Easily review and share projects with any stakeholder
With hundreds of thousands of parts in a single CAD model, a way to quickly see what’s changed gives you the power to focus on the task at hand. ShipExplorer allows any stakeholder, CAD designer, or non-CAD/CAM user to quickly share design changes, inspect models, and communicate necessary revisions to whoever needs the information. ShipExplorer makes it easy to:
- Use the switchback feature to open the related model drawing within ShipConstructor.
- Load and compare revisions between model drawings.
- Load the product hierarchies and create sets from the hierarchies for easy navigation.
- Use the embedded Search tool to find specific parts.
- Review drawings, compare design changes, and communicate complex data models across local and wide area networks.
- Quickly isolate selected objects and understand their orientation with the click of a button.
Automatically create drawings from the 3D model
In a world of 3D design and manufacturing, many activities still need to be supported with 2D drawings during design and throughout the shipyard. Using shipyard standards, MarineDrafting allows the creation of 2D approval and workshop drawings directly from the 3D model. These drawings are created in AutoCAD DWG format and remain associatively linked to the 3D model as changes happen.
Add any equipment to your project
Equipment provides the ability to insert any type of equipment item into a ShipConstructor model. The equipment items can be modeled in almost any modeling software, including directly in AutoCAD, and then incorporated into the ShipConstructor database. At this point, HVAC and Pipe connections are added as well as production specific attribute information. Once standards have been defined, they are ready to be placed in the model.
Get a report on the information you need
ShipConstructor provides a flexible, powerful tool for generating non-graphical production information. The Report module allows for the definition of complex production detail reports that can be generated from the central project database on demand. With advanced features such as grouping, sorting, summary fields and full control over the visual aspects of the report, this tool provides the means to extract the information required for the entire team. Any report can be exported to formats such as Microsoft Excel for further calculation and analysis.
Understand your build strategy
ProductHierarchy is the hub within a project for production preparation. The build strategy is the primary product hierarchy, which defines the assembly sequence for the project. Every part produced in each of the various modules has a place in the build strategy. Planning and scheduling departments define the build strategy to optimize the logical sequence of assembly based on production capabilities together with need-by and procurement dates. All ShipConstructor production output functions are driven by the build strategy, allowing for near-automatic generation of production drawings.
