Groot Ship Design – Hull, piping, and outfitting engineering with Cadmatic

Hull, piping, and outfitting engineering with Cadmatic

Cadmatic is key driver that allows ship design company to employ different design approach depending on project scope.

Customer challenge

  • Need to adopt different design approach depending on scope of engineering
  • Need to handle late requests for significant design changes efficiently even when the ship project is practically ready. Changes often affect all parts of the vessel. 

Cadmatic solution

  • Flexible Cadmatic software facilitates different design approach depending on whether only basic engineering or both basic and detailed engineering is required. 
  • Request for tank top height increase when midship construction plan and all the drawings were finalized. Entire Cadmatic model fixed in one day including the shell plate profile changes, and drawings.

“The beauty of Cadmatic software is that you can work the way you want. There is no strict working order that works best.” – Huib van der Pas, Construction Expert and Manager

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Groot Ship Design believes in co-creation and achieving success together with customers. The design and engineering company from Leek in the Netherlands is well known for its Groot Cross-Bow® design and a hands-on approach to its naval architecture and engineering solutions. Groot Ship Design implemented Cadmatic in 2005 and uses the software for hull, piping, and outfitting engineering.

When Groot Ship Design was founded in 2005, Cadmatic was selected for modeling and engineering after 3D hull software candidates were evaluated. The first Cadmatic project was executed in 2007.

According to Jan Willem Cuperus, Managing Director at Groot Ship Design, they chose Cadmatic due to its user-friendliness, the availability of engineers familiar with the software, and the fact that their customers and potential customers were already using Cadmatic.

Cadmatic use was expanded from hull engineering to include piping and outfitting in 2010/2011.

“For customers in our area, we perform hull and construction engineering up to detail engineering and supply of PI. For customers in the Far East, we supply basic engineering packages that include construction plans that are prepared as Cadmatic 3D models from which the plans and data are generated,” says Jan Willem.
Ship 3D model

Flexibility and ease of modifications

Huib van der Pas, Construction Expert and Manager of the GSD Polish office indicates that Cadmatic’s flexibility and the ease with which modifications can be made are highly appreciated.

“You can see this, for example, in a basic engineering project where all floors in a double bottom are executed with 11 mm thickness in the entire midship, and it is then decided to change to 12 mm. In this case, you don’t have to open each floor view, you can simply make a view in which you can see all floors in the section, clump-select them, and change the thickness for all floors at the same time,” Huib explains.

According to him, the same goes for floor stiffeners where the end of stiffeners are related to shells and tank tops. A floor can be modelled and then copied over a large area of the vessel, which then adjusts itself.

Huib recalls a case where the midship construction plan and all the drawings were finalized and ready to be sent for class approval, when they received a request to increase the tank top height.

“In Cadmatic, we managed to change and fix the entire model in one day, including the shell plate profile changes, and drawings.”

He adds that there were naturally some things that needed to be done by hand or in specific views, but that the main part of the job was be done in a relatively short time.

Ship 3D model

Cadmatic 3D model images of the Hanse ECO. The vessel is a dedicated design for transport of short sea cargo in Europe.

Different design approach depending on scope of engineering

Groot Ship Design approaches projects that only require basic engineering slightly differently to projects that require both basic and detailed engineering.

In projects that only require basic engineering, they generally divide vessels in six parts: For the midship they use a double bottom section and two side sections in addition to the foreship, aftship and superstructure.

According to Huib, if you start with the midship, the advantage of this approach is that one engineer can do the double bottom and one can do a side section. The side can then be mirrored for a complete midship model. A separate section is then created in which the drawing is done so that if, for some reason, detailed engineering is required after all, the visible sections can be changed later in the drawing section, resulting in an as-built construction plan.

“Since the foreship, aftship and superstructure are often quite different, we keep one engineer on their own part of the vessel. This ensures that the engineers don’t have to switch sections often and the small model loads quickly. We have the best of both worlds: we have reasonable loading times, and we don’t have to load often since the work is done in the same model,” says Huib.

In cases where it is known that detailed engineering is also required, Groot Ship Design start design work based on sections. One section is modelled in detail, and then copied forward of the aft to create the entire midship. This means that details are not forgotten later. The same approach is used for a separate section for drawings, which means that the construction plan for class approval can be created.

Cadmatic flexibility has been a key factor in facilitating these different approaches.

“The beauty of Cadmatic software is that you can work the way you want. There is no strict working order that works best.”
Ship 3D model


Distributing design work to subcontractors

Groot Ship Design also uses Cadmatic distributed design system to distribute engineering to subcontractors. In the north of the Netherlands, it is common practice that subcontractors for systems and engine rooms also perform the engineering.

“It is easy for all parties to cooperate and communicate in a single engineering model. The shipyard can see the status, the subcontractor responsible for systems and piping can see the construction and request penetrations for pipes, and the company responsible for the hull can also see collisions with equipment and anticipate them. Working from different locations and even from different countries can be arranged without difficulty,” Jan Willem says.

As an example, Jan Willem points to an ongoing Hanse ECO project for RHAS, a multipurpose vessel de-signed specifically to carry short sea cargo in Europe. The hull shape and bow part are particularly eye-catching. The vessel’s hybrid propulsion system will allow it to sail with the lowest possible emissions.

“Integrating all the new technologies and simultaneously preparing cutting documentation for the actual building requires flexibility from both our skilled engineers or naval architects and the software they work with. We very much appreciate these functions in Cadmatic . The construction model has been completed by our own engineers with main equipment and main routings. This allows the best arrangement of all (tight) spaces in the vessel. The integration of all these parts worked well, resulting in a well-maintained building schedule. The first vessel of the series of five was launched on 15 May 2021.

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