Maxsurf Suite News

Bentley Systems acquired FormSys, based in Perth, Australia. This software development company has a proven, 20-year track record in 3D design, analysis, and construction software for structural engineering, offshore engineering, and naval architecture. The acquisition will expand Bentley’s SACS offerings for the design and analysis of floating structures, further extending the company’s reach in the offshore energy market. SACS is an integrated finite element structural analysis suite of programs that uniquely supports the design, fabrication, installation, operations, and maintenance of offshore structures, including oil platforms and wind farms. Thirty-eight years of focus on these specialized requirements have made SACS the analysis mainstay for most of the world’s offshore engineers.

The recent growth of the Brazilian shipbuilding industry, with the construction of more than 20 new shipyards and efforts to modernize older shipyards, has highlighted the need for more efficient ship design and construction methods. With the increased reliance on production line automation, ship design software has become even more important. Maritime Reporter and Engineering News spoke with Mr. Bruno França,CEO of  Brazilian IT company Sincronia and ShipConstructor representative in Brazil, about the relevance of CAD based ship design software in the new Brazilian shipbuilding industry. Please tell us a little about yourself and your company (Sincronia)? My name if Bruno França, I am CEO of Sincronia.

Formation Design Systems has updated its Maxsurf suite of naval architecture software. The new version 13 release adds new functions for analysis of existing vessels and generation of vessel structure. The new features in version 13 of Maxsurf will help both monohull and multihull designers. They include automated fitting of existing designs, enhanced stability criteria, motions prediction of catamarans and improved generation of hull structure.

Scheduled for a September 2003 release, the next major revision of the 3-D product modeling software for shipbuilding and offshore platforms from Albacore Research Ltd., ShipConstructor2004, will include a full Heating, Ventilation and Air-Conditioning module (HVAC). HVAC is a fully integrated member of the ShipConstructor suite of Structure, Automatic and Manual Nest, NC Code generation, Outfit, Pipe, Fairing, and Lofting tools. To facilitate automatic report generation, HVAC makes full use of ShipConstructor's SQL Server product database. As with all ShipConstructor modules, HVAC is a full 3-D modeling package; this reduces drafting errors and time-to-production. With ShipConstructor, HVAC ducts are full-featured AutoCAD entities.

Albacore Research Ltd. (ARL) and Australia’s Formation Design Systems (FDS) announced that FDS has become an official dealer of ShipConstructor, ARL’s 3D Product Modeling tool for ships and offshore structures of all sizes and complexities. Rolf G. Oetter, President of ARL, and Philip Christensen, Managing Director of FDS, say that this decision developed as a result of an already-established successful business relationship between the two companies. Mr Christensen explains, “Formation Design Systems currently supplies initial design software to a large number of naval architects and shipbuilders in the Asian and Australian regions.