Leveraging the Potential of 3D Data in the Ship Lifecycle with Open Formats and Interfaces

This paper presents selected 3D applications from several phases in the lifecycle of a ship that have been implemented by Fraunhofer IGD in recent years. All are built on open standards and not tightly coupled to any software suite of a given 3D CAD vendor. This openness is the key for easy adaptation to any existing IT infrastructure and a high level of flexibility. To illustrate our approach, we present technical details of some of the developed applications as case studies. In the outlook section of the paper, we formulate some tasks for future work including specification of a lightweight exchange format for the maritime sector based on ISO standard JT.