At NASDIS we work with cutting edge technology and the industry leading software. Sometimes it’s exactly what we need for the job. However, there are times when we require something a little more special and adapted to our clients needs. That’s why we are developing our own software to make the design and engineering process quicker.

The following applications presented here are just a few examples of the tools developed for some critical or heavy time-consuming operations.

Interfacing Aveva Marine to Fincantieri Production & Acquisition systems

The purpose of these interfaces is to link the model produced in the Aveva Marine ship design software with Fincantieri’s hull & pipe production systems and the SAP acquisition system. This involves processing Aveva Standard outputs, reverse engineering some of the information and automatic generation of various output files in different formats.

In September 2014, the programs were successfully tested in Fincantieri’s Trieste headquarter. Afterwards the interfaces were extensively used throughout the detailed design of the Silversea passenger.

IDF-GPD

Semi-automatic generation of pipe cutting files from IDF Tribon Isogen outputs.

The software is reading the pipe isometric data from the IDF file and is generating, with minimum user intervention, the input files for the cutting machine.

A major gap in the information flow is covered. From the pipe design system (Tribon in this case) through Isogen to the pipe cutting machine. Normally each Iso would have been programed manually (with a heavy impact on productivity and data reliability) on the machine to cut all the pipe segments and holes. We have created a software “bridge” that extracts all the info from the Iso and then automatically generates the cutting files. The method allows the processing of large batches of isometrics at once and the quick release of cutting information to the production.

The program was successfully tested and implemented in VARD Braila shipyard for an HGG SPC500 cutting machine.

Profile Cutting Interface & Profile Management

Automatic profiles nesting and cutting files generation for a plate cutting machine.

The idea of this software came from the need to increase the profiles production in the shipyard and, in the same time, to better utilize the existing plate cutting machines. A special support was conceived for bulb profiles, to hold one profile bar on the cutting machine area and to be cut in the same way as a plate.

Starting from the regular output of the hull design system (Tribon), the profiles are nested on bars and the outputs are cutting files and detailed sketches for each bar.

The program was successfully tested and implemented in VARD Braila shipyard on an oxy-gas cutting machine.

ISO-RC

Conversion of absolute to relative coordinates in Isogen drawings.

The purpose was to make the drawings obtained from Tribon-Isogen or Aveva Marine more useful, so that the coordinates shown on them to have a real meaning for the production department. Hence the need to automatically convert the absolute coordinates given by Isogen to relative coordinates, specific for each project. Otherwise, manual intervention (time consuming and unreliable) would have been required for each drawing.

The program was successfully tested and implemented in Chantier de l’Atlantique (STX) France and VARD Tulcea Shipyard. It is currently generating the pipe production data from Tribon and Aveva Marine projects.

Please read the user’s guide for more information.

DXF-List-Extract

Automatic generation of CSV material lists from DXF drawings.

This application was targeted to the outputs of PDMS Isogen but it can be used to extract text information from any DXF drawing. We were requested to obtain a material list from each iso and to centralize all these lists for a specific pipe system. Therefore we have created a software to read a given area of the drawing and to extract the text list from that area to a neutral CSV file, which can later be easily imported into Excel format.

The program successfully generated PDMS pipe production data for the Scarabeo-8 project (Fincantieri, Italy).