The collaboration modelling framework for ship structural design

Within a shipyard, many designers each have their own design objective cooperating in complex design circumstance that a variety of software tools run on different hardware platforms. Different CAD systems are used by different design stages and departments, and the design result is usually delivered on paper drawings. The proliferation of data and the rising number of disparate data systems do not communicate with each other and certainly do not collaborate. Advanced 3D modelling tools are installed in most of progressive shipyards for advantage to improve their productivities. However these 3D models are repetitiously constructed as per the specified design objectives of disparate software tools in various design stages. This paper describes the development of collaboration modelling framework, knowledge-based design support system, to make a web-based data-sharing collaborative environment potentially allowing to facilitate some applications, construct 3D lines rapidly, translate the product data, and further be capable of providing reasonable model configurations for XML type, and sharing the web services from the Internet to comply with shipyards’ specific strategy for each particular case to be designed.