World-Class Electrical Design Tool for Shipbuilding

Abstract

Electrical aspects of complex vessels are significantly relevant within the overall design and production, but it is a fact that shipyards and technical offices still don’t have this discipline completely integrated within the rest of CAD disciplines. The consequence of this lack of electrical capability is the need of very costly manual intervention to achieve the quality expected. The efficient management of the typical electrical items, such as cables, electric devices, hangers, trays, and their connections leverage the design. But even more, the advanced capability for clash detection or intelligent engineering advices, such as the critical distance from high power cables to sensitive equipment or transits in structure elements could reduce dramatically costly errors in production. This paper describes a CAD System electrical solution, which is fully capable and totally integrated with the rest of the design disciplines. Apart from the description of its core capability, including intelligent diagrams connected to the 3D model, advanced standards management or the user-friendly 3D environment for equipment and cable layout, there will be described the newest functionality added to the tool in the last versions. Among others, it is remarkable the conduits management with cables in electrical trays, drawings with smart cable interconnection, advanced penetrations management, reuse of electrical diagrams from external sources, and the ability for cable installation planning. The convenience of using a suitable tool to handle the electrical aspects in all design and production stages, is especially critical in naval vessels and submarines, in which the solution described has been successfully used for years. Electrical CAD design can be used in a standalone version too, as it offers capability to interchange data with other potential CAD tools and it is integrated with some of the most important Product Lifecycle Management solutions in shipbuilding.