KR Webzine Vol.166

The Korean Register (KR) and NAPA, the leading maritime software, services, and data analysis provider have successfully created a ‘Live Interface Function’ for their respective software programs KR SeaTrust-HullScan and NAPA Steel, allowing the real time synchronization of a ship’s structural data from the NAPA software to the KR SeaTrust-HullScan.

KR SeaTrust-HullScan is a technical software that performs a structural analysis of oil-tankers and bulk carriers applying the common structural rules, as well as for container ships, LNG carriers, and FPSOs. It is widely used in both domestic and foreign maritime industries, particularly by shipyards and research institutes.

NAPA Steel is a 3D CAD/CAE system developed by NAPA, the industry-leading maritime software company. It is a comprehensive tool for designing, viewing and evaluating 3D designs, enabling designers, engineers and classification societies to rely on a single source of truth. 3D model-based approval also opens the door to greater use of digital twins for asset life-cycle management, where real-world data can be compared against a virtual model of a ship, and vice versa, to identify problems and validate performance data. As a result, it is widely used in the world's leading shipyards, including the big three shipyards in the Republic of Korea. 

Most shipyards use the NAPA Steel to design ships and then use SeaTrust-HullScan to check whether the ship design complies with the ship classification’s rules and to obtain approval. The data produced in this process is managed in a unique file format applicable to each software respectively, so in order to import the data used in NAPA Steel into SeaTrust-HullScan, users must convert it into the format necessary for SeaTrust-HullScan.

However, now the new live interface function can share NAPA Steel’s 3D model data which is used to assess the rule scantling of a ship in real time with just one click of a button to SeaTrust-HullScan, significantly reducing the time spent on designing and the possibility of errors.

In addition, it can import the data on SeaTrust-HullScan in real time without running NAPA Steel or using an extra file, offering greater convenience compared to other competitive programs.

“This live interface function jointly developed with NAPA can share accurate information from NAPA Steel in seconds, with a single click. This is a dramatic improvement on the previous arrangement which took several hours to input data to SeaTrust-HullScan. We expect that this dramatic improvement will make SeaTrust-HullScan even more popular with users, while contributing to productivity and quality of ship design,” said Daeheon KIM, the Executive Vice President of KR’s R&D division.

Yongsook LEE, the managing director of NAPA Korea added: “NAPA has long pioneered the shift from 2D to 3D in design and approval. This co-development was implemented to realize the technical developments required to give users of KR and NAPA software the real benefits in assessing the scantling of a structure via 3D models - finally making 3D model-based approval (3D MBA) a reality.”

KR and NAPA believe that the 3D MBA technology could be developed further and are now working to expand the interface area to the point where data can be exchanged mutually between the software.

△ SeaTrust-HullScan imports data of the ship’s multiple sections
 from NAPA Steel with one click