The use of Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools has become increasingly common in the ship design and manufacturing industries over the last decade. These tools have often evolved from small individual efforts developed by one or two engineers into major programs on which large portions of the ship design effort depend. In many cases the management of the computer system has not kept pace with the evolution of the software. This paper describes an approach taken to the development of computer systems to minimize some of the resulting problems. The underlying premise is that the objective of the system is to increase the overall productivity of the organization instead of the productivity of any single technical discipline. The conclusions reached were that more consideration should be given to the data storage, management and communication capabilities of current computers by the ship design organizations in addition to the effort of developing design or analysis programs. The conceptual system design that resulted from applying this approach to a particular organization is presented along with a description of the first software item implementing this concept.

The Navy program for applying CAD/CAM technology to ship design and construction has undergone a number of changes in the past fen years. To clarify these changes and their relationships, a summary of the history is required as shown in Figure 1. The Naval Sea Systems Command established a computer-aided ship design group in 1952, one year after delivery of the first commercial computer. All of their efforts focused on applying computers to the ship design phases performed by NAVSEA. Based on the success of these efforts, NAVSEA established a program called CASDAC (Computer Aided Ship Design and Construction) in 1966. The objectives of CASDAC were to prove the feasibility of computer application, to verify the benefits, and to foster the use of computers to all phases of ship design and construction. In 1980, this program was renamed the CAD/CAM Program. In 1981, the Navy split the program into two separate but coordinated programs. The "CAM" of "CAD/CAM" became part of a larger effort aimed at the private shipbuilding industry. That program is the shipbuilding Technology Program which in turn is a major segment of the Navy's Manufacturing Technology Program. The "CAD" of CAD/CAM is now called the Computer Supported Design or CSD Program. The remainder of this paper will apply only to the CSD Program.

The paper discusses a number of facets of Computer-Aided Ship Design and Construction (CASDAC) in which the writer has been involved. A brief history of computers in the Navy is given, some notes on the CASDAC project, the flavor of two recent programs, Navy planning and philosophy in detail design. and construction, some notes on the Computer-Aided Piping Design and Construction (CAPDAC) project, and finally some notes on the increasingly important role of computer science. The U.S. Navy has a long history in the use of computers in shipbuilding. In May 1944 the first computer came into operation at Harvard, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator -- the Harvard Mark I. This was designed and constructed by Professor Howard Aiken -- at that time a Commander in the United States Navy. It was the Bureau of Ships which first sponsored the operation of this calculator and some of the first problems attacked originated from the Bureau. In 1952, the Applied Mathematics Laboratory was established at the now David W. Taylor Naval Ship Research and Development Center (DTNSRDC) to initiate computer service to the Navy. For this installation the Univac's 6th computer was installed in 1953. Early work included shaft vibrations, shell stiffening, propeller design, underwater sound intensities, pipe stress analysis, and nuclear reactor design. Within a year, this computer was operating around the clock. By 1958, clients included personnel from the naval shipyards processing programs associated with their ship construction program. By 1960 naval shipyards possessed their own computers and programs were in operation for tank capacity tables, hull deflection, voltage drop, shock mounts, sound isolation, mast calculations, weights and moments, propulsion shaft bearing reactions, pipe bend calculations and pipe stress analysis.

This session centered on the current capabilities of several commercially available graphics systems in parts nesting and computer aided shipyard drafting. Three representatives of graphics system vendors participated on a panel to answer questions from the audience concerning their products' capabilities and graphics systems in general. These representatives were Dr. Robert Cowen of Computervision Corporation. Robert N. Hickox of Adage, Inc. and Lou Melancon of Auto-Trol Corporation. In addition, a representative of the italian yard italcantieri S.p.A. was on hand to relate that yard's experience in the use of Adage equipment for interactive nesting. Of interactive nesting italcantieri, in response to questions from the floor, has seen a reduction in nesting labor as a result of using their system from between 20,00 to 24,000 man-hours per year. He further stated this effort represented the production of some 2500 nest tapes. On the topic of system reliability the vendors reported uptimes for their systems in excess of 95%. The cost of these systems was also questioned. Without a clear description of the application, number of users, etc. of such a system, the vendors were able to respond only that the costs ranged from around $100,000 for a single user drafting system on up. On the topic of computer aided design systems two members of the audience reported on the Navy's development efforts in this area. Two current applications cited in the Navy are a computer aided hull lines generation system employing interactive graphics and a graphics assisted ship's arrangements program.

Proceedings of the REAPS Technical Symposium. Paper No. 25: Integrating Shipyard Design and Manufacturing Functions into an Existing CAD/CAM System.

The Institute for Research and Engineering for Automation and Productivity in Shipbuilding (IREAPS) is an organization which conducts an industry/government cooperative program for enhancing U.S. shipbuilding capabilities through development and implementation of improved systems and manufacturing technology. The primary thrust of the IREAPS program is the conduct of research and development projects for a variety of design and production processes in the shipyard. Such projects are initiated and pursued only upon consensus of the participating organizations and are not considered complete or successful until they have been implemented under actual shipyard production conditions.

In the mid 1960's the Computer Aided Ship Design and Construction project office, located in the Naval Ship Engineering Center, was chartered to apply computer aiding techniques to all phases of the naval shipbuilding process. After the aerospace industry's success in developing a productive wiring data system and an in-depth NAVSEC sponsored study at three designated naval shipyards of the cabling/wiring flow process during installation design, it was determined that a similar system should be developed for naval ship design and production. Because there are significant differences between wiring an aircraft and wiring a ship, a direct conversion from one application to the other was ruled out. In 1965 the Westinghouse Electric Corporation was selected to develop a system of computer programs for processing the flow of electrical and electronic cabling/wiring information used in ship construction. This system was to address the entire process of installation design of equipment on board any Navy ship. This included, such functions as cable routing, hanger selection, penetration design, planning and estimating supporting documents and the equivalent of all the necessary wiring plans. The C/W System is now being implemented at Norfolk and Long Beach and is scheduled for implementation in the other naval shipyards. This system is the first of what the author hopes will be a large number of computer aided ship design and construction programs to be developed and implemented by the Naval Sea Systems Command. It is expected that by applying these systems deliberately and diligently in an integrated shipyard modernization program, the total benefits of electronic data processing can be obtained, thus producing a better ship faster and at a lower cost.