A NEW APPROACH FOR USING CAD AND PLM INTEGRATION

During the last decades, a tight and efficient integration between the CAD and the PLM systems used in complex shipbuilding products, definition, manufacturing and operation has become a more and more important matter, in order to ensure design efficiency, avoid design errors, prevent wasting time in using wrong data or, simply, to provide a common environment in which different organizations and partners working in the same shipbuilding design programs must share their data and follow common procedures. When we talk about CAD and PLM integration, we must distinguish between CAD systems that use individual files to store the data (files that must be put under a PLM system control to be properly managed) and CAD applications that use their own database as a data repository. The first one is a classic mechanical CAD to PLM integration approach, while the second is actually a proper case of systems integration, as both applications make use of their own database and both of them have to be maintained linked and synchronized, in order to guarantee data consistency and, as well, to ensure that the principle of the PLM as the “single point of truth” is maintained. In this paper, we will be focus on the database CAD systems approach, the one used for a complete integration between FORAN and Teamcenter, where there is an increment in productivity and ease of use go together when using these new capabilities.