SHIP DESIGN WITH COMPUTER AIDS

To simplify understanding of the facilities to be offered in this system, a four-way division is superimposed on the integrated whole. This division corresponds to the broad stages of the design process, during which the extent of decision to be taken is gradually reduced and for which infrequent re-calculation will be required once consideration has passed to a later stage. These stages are: Preliminary structural design, structural design, steelwork definition for production, information for production. For all four stages, a common bank of programs and programming aids is available which has been called "Central System Environment". This term is meant to indicate that, although some facilities have been thus centralized, the applications programmer is given an environment within which to create his part of the system and the user facilities with which to control the use of the application programs.