In addition, the two companies will jointly commercialise engineering services aimed at streamlining integration between early stage design and production planning.
NAPA and NDES will initially develop and commercialise interface modules that enable 3D data linkage between NAPA’s structural design software NAPA Steel [1] and NDES’s 3D ship structure viewing software Beagle [2]. NAPA Steel supports basic ship structural design, while Beagle supports production planning and design review using 3D models.
With this interface, users will be able to take the 3D design data from NAPA Steel, created mainly for basic design purposes, and seamlessly create visualisations using Beagle – allowing production plan examinations to be conducted at early design stages.
It is currently possible to study production in Beagle using 3D data created with 3D-CAD tools at the production design stage. However, thanks to this collaboration, users will be able to conduct production reviews at the initial design stages, enabling significant production cost reductions by optimising structural design and production schemes using NAPA product models earlier in the design stream.
NDES will also work on the commercialisation of engineering services, such as design support and structural analysis service using NAPA Steel. NAPA will provide in-depth technical support to NDES at its investigations and preparations for commercialisation.
Ilmo Kuutti, NAPA Group president, commented: “NAPA is delighted to start this co-operation with NDES. NDES has a long history of strong expertise in the discipline of ship production design, whereas NAPA is in the leading position in ship initial and basic design. We believe that expanding the usage of NAPA product models to cover production planning, not just early stage design, will benefit ship designers by improving collaboration between different design departments.”
Atsushi Kinoshita, NDES representative director and president, said: “NAPA provides an excellent system for initial and basic ship design and has a large number of users all over the world. NAPA excels in the upstream design field while our expertise covers downstream production processes in shipbuilding. We, therefore, are confident that we can provide new possibilities to the shipbuilding through collaboration between our companies.”