GLIMPSE TO THE FUTURE. TECHNOLOGICAL TRENDS IN THE SHIPBUILDING CAD WORLD

摘要

The ship design has varied extensively throughout history. Over the past forty years, CAD/CAM/CIM, from now they will be referred just as CAD, tools have progressed from mainframe computers to tablets, from independent programs to fully-integrated software packages, and from large shipyards to companies of all sizes. We are living a continuous and fast technology evolution, maybe this evolution goes faster than our capacity to assimilate what we can do with it, but the potential is clear and the future will be for those who identifies the right technology with the right application. In the information era, we are literally swimming in an ocean of structured and not structured data and thanks to the evolution in the Telecommunications Technologies, all that information can be used from everywhere. But information means nothing without the capability to analyse, extract conclusions and learn from it, which is way the technologies like treatment of Big Data and the Artificial Intelligence are crucial. Imagine how these technologies shall allow to engage the design of a part or any concept by applying rules which will facilitate the design significantly, how the integration of the validation of the structural models by the Classification Societies will be linked directly by cloud applications. Imagine all the benefits of this two simple examples that can be implemented thanks to the potential of these technologies. The way we work with CAD tools is also changing thanks to the ubiquitous access to the information and the different hardware available to explode that information: Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality or Mixed Reality. But not only the way we work, but also the way we interact with CAD tools is changing, with technologies like natural language processes that allows to have a direct conversation with the applications. The concepts that are absolutely clear from now to the future in shipbuilding is the use of Data Centric model and the concept of Digital Twin, a real and effective synchronization between what we design, what we construct, by covering the complete life cycle of the product thanks to technologies like IoT and RFID. Nowadays it is unimaginable to work without using CAD in shipbuilding: ease of design with design rules embedded, speed of design, use and reuse of information, etc. It is expected that in the future CAD tools will advance further and allow greater information management through new improvements. There are several scenarios of improvements explained in this paper for the next years. Some of these improvements may seem unrealistic in the short term, but reality often exceeds expectations in any field, and probably more in technology.