How AI is transforming engineering

From the design of ships to industrial plants

Written by Madalina Florean

Posted on May 09, 2025

Artificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic concept. It’s here and it is reshaping the way engineers design, optimize, and build. Whether in shipbuilding or industrial plant design, AI has the potential to make workflows smarter, reducing costly errors, and unlocking new possibilities for efficiency and innovation.

The time for AI-driven engineering is now, and those who embrace it will set the pace for the future.

From ship hulls to industrial plants – What’s similar, what’s different?

While ship design and plant design may seem like separate worlds, they share striking similarities. Both require complex, multi-disciplinary collaboration, massive amounts of structured and unstructured data, and iterative design processes where changes impact multiple systems.

Whether optimizing a hull structure for stability and weight or refining a piping layout for efficiency and safety, engineers face the same core challenge: making the best decisions in a data-heavy environment. AI is proving to be the key to handling this complexity.

Graph-based AI: Researching smarter, faster, better design decisions

At Cadmatic, we’re actively exploring how graph-based AI – including technologies like Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) and graph databases – can enhance future engineering workflows. Traditional design methods, while powerful, can struggle to capture the full complexity of relationships between components, documents, and systems. By researching how to structure design data as interconnected networks, we aim to unlock new ways for AI to analyze patterns, suggest optimizations, and improve early design decisions.

This is not a commercial feature today – but the potential is significant. Our research is focused on how such technology could help engineers identify design conflicts earlier, improve layout decisions, and better link structured and unstructured design data. It’s part of our broader commitment to continuously push the boundaries of what engineering software can do.

Using AI agents to automate workflows and free engineers for innovation

Beyond optimizing design decisions, AI is revolutionizing engineering through intelligent agents to automate workflows. These agents can reason, learn, and interact with engineering tools, interpret documentation, and streamline processes such as:

Reducing manual data entry and conversions – AI agents integrate with CAD and ERP systems, ensuring seamless data flow.
Enhancing compliance and quality control – AI continuously checks designs against classification rules (for ships) or regulatory codes (for plants).
By embedding AI-driven agents in traditional engineering software, shipyards and EPCs can remove bottlenecks and focus on innovation instead of repetitive manual tasks.

Cadmatic’s plans for shaping the future of AI-driven engineering

At Cadmatic, we see AI as a supportive tool – one that empowers engineers rather than replaces them. Our research into AI-driven recommender systems and AI automation in ship and plant design is helping professionals work faster, make smarter decisions, and build better products.