How to design detailed plate parts

Plate parts are fundamental building blocks of a ship's structure. This article outlines the process of designing these essential components.

The goal of plate part design is to create accurate representations of the physical plates that will be used in the ship's construction. This involves defining part outlines and incorporating specific details based on the environment and application of the part, and practical considerations.

Designing detailed plate parts in MasterShip

The video explains how to design plate parts. Next to this, we have listed some of the best practices from the engineering perspective, and how MasterShip supports.

• Include secondary construction elements: Use the commands SHIPPARAPART, SHIPPARAMETRICS to create the outline of plate parts, using templates. Using these templates is part of Template Oriented Modelling (TOM). See also the article How to design the basic construction in the sectional drawings. It follows the same process for parametrically drawing plate parts.

The command SHIPCREATEPARTS or the option 'bounded panel' from the parts-ribbon allows you to make parts based on a custom shape defined shape using AutoCAD line entities.

• Add details to plate parts: When the outline of a plate parts is defined, details can be added. Some typical details in shipbuilding are used for the following situations: 

• • Make stiffener connections to the parts: A good connection between stiffeners and parts ensures a strong and continuous construction, which prevents stress concentrations and allow for a good 'flow' of internal forces. A connection can be made by e.g. applying a chamfer to a plate part, or by using brackets.
  • Add welding and waterholes: Welding holes are there to make continuous welding possible. Waterholes are there to let any water (e.g. condens water or bilge water) flow to a desired place. Also consider the seams & butts arrangement while applying these weldholes.
  • Make cut-outs: Cut-outs can be made in parts for weight saving, to create manholes, or to allow for stiffeners to pass through.
  • Prevent sharp edges: When a plate part has a very sharp corner (<15°), the corner should be cut off at a place where there is still 20 mm of material between the edges.  A chamfer or fillet can be used for this.
  • Use a bended flange instead of a faceplate: This can save time and cost in some situations. When the dimensions of the flanged part need to be very exact, then contact the supplier of these bend parts (cutting company).

The command SHIPADDDETAIL allows you to add various details to plate parts for these situations (and more). Combined with 'named parameters' (SHIPNAMEDPARAM), this functionality allows for flexible dimensioning of these details. This again uses templates, as a part of TOM.

SHIPREMOVEDETAIL can be used to remove details if needed. SHIPADDHOLE allows for the creation of holes in any desired shape.

• Consider maximum plate sizes: Make parts that fit into an industrial plate used at the cutting company. Large parts may need to be split into multiple pieces. The SHIPSPLITPART command can be used to split parts.
• Include overlength for bending parts: This overlength is used to hold the part during the bending process and is cut off afterwards. When designing a plate part, take this into account. You can use the command SHIPADDGREEN for this.

Other considerations

Expert tip: While not recommended, it is possible to adjust MasterShip parts using the AutoCAD command BEDIT. Select your part from the list with a 'B' prefixed. So, if the part ID is AF48A, then you select the block BAF48A. Now, you can start modifying the part outline. For example, shifting the outer contour or a hole by a few millimeters. 

Note: Using this workflow, the corresponding solid is not automatically updated. After editing the block, you should remove the solid and apply the command SHIPPARTS2SOLID to get the correct solid as well.

Note2: This workflow can destroy a correct application of background processes and references in MasterShip software, and can cause the software to give incorrect output.