APPROVal of Engineering Design models using OCX

Maritime21 underscores the criticality of a cohesive maritime value chain in propelling innovation, efficiency, and competitiveness across the maritime sector. At its core lies the development of digital and standardized interfaces to facilitate data sharing among stakeholders. Spearheaded by the APPROVED+ project and the Open Class 3D Exchange (OCX) standard, this initiative aims to actualize a seamless exchange of information among designers, shipyards, and classification societies. By streamlining digital exchanges, the project aims to reduce time-to-market, bolster quality, and ensure traceability throughout ship design and production processes. The APPROVED+ project ambitiously seeks to expand the OCX standard to bridge existing gaps in hull discipline while extending its utility to other domains. The project has worked with three primary workstreams: Load Line Verification, Finite Element Design Verification and OCX Standardisation. Subsequent discussions underscored the feasibility of integrating SOLAS requirements into 3D models, enabling early detection of compliance issues and guiding designers towards consistent outcomes. The Finite Element (FE) workstream devised a methodology to augment design loads with supplementary information essential for FE calculations, such as loads and boundary conditions. Standardisation will be a key to succeed in establishing a seamless digital thread between designer/yards and classification societies. Looking forward, the project envisions automating the verification process by disseminating digital representations of designs in OCX format to classification societies. The culmination of the APPROVED and APPROVED+ projects birthed the Open Class Exchange joint consortium in May 2021. Comprising 33 voluntary member companies, the consortium is dedicated to enhancing maritime safety through the promotion of transparent design documentation and data processing, fostering OCX standard evolution, and serving as a beacon for its implementation across the industry. The Consortium has further instituted a working Interoperability Forum with the aim of expediting the deployment of production-ready, use-case tested functionalities and cross-platform OCX-based workflows to the market. The digital transformation, defined as the infusion of digital technology into all organizational facets, is increasingly pervading the shipping and shipbuilding sectors. This evolution has accelerated post the global upheaval induced by the COVID-19 pandemic, driven by necessity, technological advancements, and consumer expectations. The advent of the Open Class 3D Exchange (OCX) standard heralds a paradigmatic shift in the maritime arena, transitioning from conventional 2D drawing-centric approval processes to a 3D model-centric approach. By facilitating structural information exchange, OCX lays the groundwork for a more comprehensive digital exchange between classification societies and shipbuilders. The digitization of class verification and approval processes confers substantial benefits upon designers, shipyards, and classification societies, with the 3D model enhancing both design quality and review processes significantly. Successful demonstrations have validated the seamless exchange of design models exported from diverse independent 3D CAD systems to classification society rule calculation tools. The application of OCX models for prescriptive rule calculations underscores their capacity to encompass all requisite information stipulated by classification society rules. Moreover, the ability to visualize detailed design features provides the requisite capability for design model verification. These demonstrations substantiate the project's vision of a fully integrated and seamless digital model exchange between designers/yards and classification societies, ultimately replacing 2D drawings as design documentation. With the widespread adoption of the OCX schema by major CAD vendors and several prominent classification societies, OCX is swiftly emerging as an industry standard for design information exchange between designers/yards and classification societies, fulfilling a longstanding industry need. Model-based approval confers myriad benefits upon shipyards, designers, and classification societies, including reduced workload, expedited time-to-market, cost savings, enhanced quality, streamlined calculation processes, and augmented transparency. As the digitalization of shipping gains momentum, it falls upon all industry stakeholders – shipowners, designers, shipyards, and classification societies – to ensure a seamless and efficient transition, optimizing resources and processes. The OCX standard represents a monumental stride in this journey and is poised to become an integral facet of the approval process as the maritime sector undergoes its digital transformation.

The anticipated results of the project include a new, more automated, efficient and effective approach for design verification based on engineering models eliminating the need for design documentation in the form of 2D drawings and calculation reports covering the complete basic design stage for the hull discipline. The proposed innovation represents a major step towards the interoperability between CAD and CAE tools and adoption in the industry of advanced modelling and simulation tools. Ship design will be enhanced through one shared and adaptive digital model containing the yard/designer assumptions representing the documentation requirements by the classification society. The adaptive nature of the implemented solution allows continuous updating of the model during the design phase to match evolving specifications. A seamless digital exchange between the designer/yard and the classification society will lead to reduced time to market, improved quality and traceability.

A seamless maritime value chain is highlighted by Maritm21 as one of the key enablers for accelerated innovation, efficiency and competitiveness for the maritime industry. Maritm21 stresses the need to develop digital and standardised interfaces for sharing of data between all stakeholders. It is also necessary that stakeholders can come together and cooperate to realise a seamless maritime value chain. This is the central core idea of the APPROVED+ project and the Open Class 3D Exchange (OCX) standard. APPROVED+ utilises the momentum created by the APPROVED project partners and build further on the main ideas from this project. A seamless digital exchange between the designer/yard and the classification society will lead to reduced time to market, improved quality and traceability. Commercial ship design and production are steadily under the pressure to reduce time to market and overall production costs as well as to improve product quality with respect to multiple performance criteria that are to be met at the same time. Increased digitalisation and automation within the shipbuilding industry has the potential to leverage the competition between high-cost and low-cost countries. Simulation, virtual prototyping, virtual testing combined with the introduction of advanced production and manufacturing robots are enabling technologies important also to the shipbuilding industry. Robotization and automation will be instrumental in increasing production efficiency and lowering production costs. Future yards will be based on a digital thread intervening all processes from design to production. In the future, a digital product definition from the design will be used in fully automated production processes. The APPROVED+ project will expand the established OCX standard to close the remaining gaps for the hull discipline and expand the value to other disciplines.