Plate Searching Algorithm for Relation Based Ship Outfitting Assembly Planning Automation

The relation based ship outfitting assembly planning automation(APA) is developed in this study. Ship outfitting APA is an automated process that plans the assembly block and stage of outfitting parts using CAD data. Finding the related blocks and its number is one of the key problems in relation based ship outfitting APA. To solve the problem, a ship was modeled as a weighted directional graph which its components are nodes and their joints are edges. The weights of the edges are determined by the priority of the relationship that the edge represents. Define this graph as weighted part-relationship graph(weighted P-R graph). From an outfitting part, using Dijkstra algorithm, the plate searching algorithm perform the search until a hull structure part is found. The plate searching algorithm takes P-R graph as input, and takes related block data and number of related blocks as output. ship outfitting APA using the plate searching algorithm is commercialized, the APA accuracy would increase and planning expenses would decrease compared to using volume based outfitting APA or planning assembly manually