As part of a programme to facilitate co-operation between ship designers and classification societies through digital data transfer, the Japanese classification society ClassNK and software provider Tribon Solutions have developed a direct interface between the Tribon Shipbuilding system and ClassNK PrimeShip. This new capability offers efficient data transfer and cost reductions in the early ship design phases. As a result of this integrated process, ship designers will be able to examine multiple design alternatives in a shorter time allowing more detailed analysis of structural strength and steel weight.

PrimeShip consists of a range of software applications and supplementary services which offers an approach to enhancing safety throughout the life of ships. It includes software to be used at the design stage, as well as a variety of through-life services to support maintenance and procedures, which vary widely according to ship type. The direct interface between the Tribon system and PrimeShip supports Finite Element Method (FEM) based strength assessment of hull structures. This will lead to that the hull structure, including all plates, stiffeners and properties created in the Tribon system can be automatically entered as input into PrimeShip, thus reducing the time for shipyards to comply with ClassNK requirements. The interface is based on the new XML standard for digital data exchange (XML stands for Extensible Markup Language).