U.S. Shipbuilders and CAD Suppliers Demonstrate Exchange of STEP Shipbuilding Data among Five Diverse Shipbuilding Environments

A consortium of leading U.S. Shipyards and Computer-Aided-Design (CAD) Systems developers have successfully demonstrated the exchange of shipbuilding data between its members. The prototype translators were based upon the STEP (Standard for the Exchange of Product model data) standards for the shipbuilding industry being developed within ISO. These translators will enable shipyards and ship design companies to exchange detailed ship design information between dissimilar design systems; this exchange is not possible using previous technology.

The consortium includes Computervision Corporation - a wholly owned subsidiary of Parametric Technology Corpor-ation, Electric Boat Corporation, Ingalls Shipbuilding division of Litton Industries (Ingalls), Intergraph Corporation, Kock-ums Computer Systems Inc., Newport News Shipbuilding, The University of Michigan, Avondale Shipyards and Advanc-ed Management Catalyst Inc. (facilitator).

National Steel and Shipbuilding Company, participating through Kockums Computer Systems, and the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division are providing additional technical support to the consortium. MariSTEP is sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In the initial implementation effort, five shipbuilding environments enhanced their internal systems' product model data and developed translators to support the export and import of shipbuilding data. In this first phase, Intergraph Corporation, Newport News Shipbuilding and Kockums Computer Systems successfully exchanged ship moulded forms and compartmentation data. Intergraph based its translation on its ISDP system, Newport News, its VIVID system, and Kockums, its TRIBON system. Electric Boat (EB) and the team of Ingalls Shipbuilding and Computer-vision (CV) exchanged ship piping, with EB using its CATIA based system, and with the Ingalls and CV team using PTC's DIMENSION III product. Applic-ation areas and corresponding ISO STEP Ship-building Applic-ation Protocols (APs) are Ship Moulded Forms (AP 216), Ship Arrangements (AP 215), and Ship Piping (AP 217).

In the next phase of the project, the teams will switch implementation targets so that by the end of 1998, all five shipbuilding environments will have compatible translators for exchanging ship moulded forms, compartmentation, and piping data. In addition, all five teams will complete translators for the exchange of ship structures (AP 218) by summer of 1999.

The initial phase demonstrated the viability of the exchange of the STEP shipbuilding data as the very diverse shipbuilding environments were able to successfully exchange data. The implementation of STEP technology will significantly impact the U.S. Shipbuilding industry. STEP represents a key technology to allow for close collaboration and teamwork between the different companies involved in the design, construction, and life-cycle maintenance of ships.

EPM Technology also contributed to the success of this exercise. All the MariSTEP partners are using software from the EXPRESS Data Manager suite.

For more information, the MariSTEP Project maintains a public website at:
http://www.intergraph.com/federal2/projects/STEP