Kvichak Employs SolidWorks

Kvichak Marine Industries of Seattle is using SolidWorks software to design a new 45-ft. Coast Guard patrol boat for a wide range of maritime situations, including search and rescue, environmental protection, law enforcement, and port/coastal security. The company's prototype won the design contract for the boat in a three-vendor competition in 2006. A special provision in the $600m contract requires each of the boat's 5,000 parts to be fully modeled in CAD software. The data will fuel an interactive Web-based assembly that Coast Guard engineers can use in maintaining the boat for decades to come. Kvichak is using SolidWorks custom property capabilities to annotate the Web-based model.

The boat, the Response Boat - Medium, or RB-M, is intended to succeed the Coast Guard's 35-year-old fleet of 41-ft. utility boats, the multi-mission workhorse of the Coast Guard. The contract anticipates as many as 250 RB-Ms will be manufactured by Kvichak and its partner in the project, Marinette Marine of Wisconsin. Kvichak has integrated 30 licenses of SolidWorks software with its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system so that when designs are approved, engineers can initiate purchasing and manufacturing workflow with a single mouse click. Engineers use COSMOSWorks design analysis software to optimize the design of individual structural parts as well as study effects of forces on the entire boat. These forces include collisions, wave impacts, and random forces such as those exerted on a hull when balanced on the peak of a wave.