- Realistic presentation and visualisation
- Saves significant time and money
- Animation shows operations for non-engineering staff
- Company can now react more quickly to customer changes
- Cost cut for developing projects
Destroying the old design limits
1 min read
Fleet Support (FSL), a VT Group and BAE Systems joint venture at the Portsmouth Naval Base, provides ship repair services for the Royal Navy and commercial ships. Pre 2000, the company equipped itself with an Autodesk CAD solution, partly because it was the industry standard and partly because it offered an incremental transition from 2D to 3D. Laptops were equipped for use on location, and the electrical team also adopted AutoCAD with functionality provided through FSL-developed Visual Basic.
Its first task was to design equipment brackets for existing vessels. FSL draftsman Tony Swateridge says: "We modelled the seats in Mechanical Desktop, then produced the 2D drawings and isometrics directly from the 3D model... We got a positive response from production because of the clarity."
When Autodesk Inventor was available, FSL upgraded. Says Geoff Skinner, Naval architect: "In 2001 we were invited by the MoD to propose upgrades to the sailors' accommodation on Type 42 destroyers. Instead of the usual 2D drawings, they required a 3D visualisation. They also specified a 'walk-through' capability, so that personnel who were not trained in interpreting drawings could get an appreciation of our proposals."
Skinner's team used Inventor along with NavisWorks. "This technique had the advantage that if someone missed or didn't understand something, we could look at it again from another angle or reverse direction instantly," says Skinner. "The work we did obviously impressed the MoD. We are now in a strong position to win the main follow-up work… There are 11 Type 42s, but they are all somewhat different. However, because of Inventor's adaptive design capability, we can easily move our designs from vessel to vessel."
FSL says benefits so far include Inventor's short learning curve, presentation and visualisation improvements and time and money savings. Says Swateridge: "It is excellent for visualising our designs. For example, apply a steel finish and it looks like steel. We animated some parts, too: we showed how the new bunk arrangement went together, how the ventilation came off... This is all part of getting early understanding and fast decisions from non-engineering staff.
"Inventor's assembly-centric design capability is good too. Say I am working on a part with the assembly in the background. I can see and use the assembly and project geometry from it without slowing the system. It is good with large assemblies as well. The design that came out of the Habitability Study is huge – over 1,000 parts."
Skinner concludes: "Inventor has been very successful, and it is getting even better. With Version 6 we could interpret surfaces with solids. We have now upgraded to Inventor Series 7, and have installed a seat of Inventor Professional because of its rules-based piping and tubing capability."
Key benefits
