SENER announces the new FORAN V70R3.0, available from the 31st of July, 2014. With more than 45 years in the market, FORAN takes advantage of SENER´s innovative development effort as the key factor to give added value.
The new version incorporates improvements for the users and on its own technology. Some remarkable new aspects are described below.
FORAN offers a solution covering all design stages and disciplines. The process starts with the forms generation in FORAN or imported from a third-party solution.
The module FGA for the generation of the general arrangement allows a quick definition of compartments and spaces in 3D. This module incorporates new functionality for the early positioning of equipment in the 3D model that can be linked intrinsically to the spaces of the ship and will be integrated with the rest of outfitting solutions in further design stages.
A new module, FABSIC, groups all the former applications related with the naval architecture calculations, storing the information in the FORAN database and allowing to organize the concepts in a hierarchical tree. New enhancements are the interactive definition of loading conditions and a user-defined stability criteria, all integrated with the spaces and volumes defined in FGA module of FORAN. FBASIC will be finished in December 2014, with the incorporation of the deterministic stability module (FLOOD), probabilistic method (FSUBD) and the module for launching (LAUNCH).
The hull structure definition in FORAN follows automated and intelligent-oriented tasks taking advantage of the topological model. The new release improves the structure model definition with fast generation of fabrication outputs. It is worth to mention the innovative representation of structural parts by BREP and new enhancements in the generation of a simplified model to be exported to FEM tools, reducing dramatically the time during the analysis process.
Finally, as FORAN is not only devoted to ship design but also to offshore units, some options are oriented to this kind of problematic, such as the possibility to handle transversal symmetries.
The recently re-developed solution FSYSD for the diagrams definition adds functionality, such as new instrumentation lines according with ANSI/ISA-S5-1-1984/1992 regulation. The communications with other systems has been improved and now it is possible to export multiple diagrams in PDF format. Other options are the automatic labelling and improvements to check the diagram integrity.
The solution for the standards definition, equipment layout, piping, auxiliary structures, HVAC and interference checking is totally integrated with the rest of FORAN disciplines. Regarding FPIPE, some remarkable aspects are a new entity for equipment assembly, the replacement tool for straight fittings in pipelines and other functionality in auxiliary structures and supports.
Within the electrical design in FORAN, FCABLE reduces the wasted gaps in the cable filling and allows to export cable transits to Hawke´s HDS. On the other hand, the module FREPG for the reports generation allows to define labels including a QR code.
FDESIGN is the solution for the automatic drawing generation in all FORAN disciplines. In this regard, some remarkable upgrades are improvements to optimize the labelling, the possibility of having drawings of sections defined in different planes and more properties for distributors containing different heights referred to decks.
Is important to mention the effort in the development of the integration between FORAN and different Product Life Cycle Management (PLM) tools, by means of an advanced and open integration that follows the user demands.
Finally, SENER offers a set of solutions for the visualization of the ship 3D model already generated in FORAN in a virtual reality environment, with examples from a stereoscopic view in a big screen, through cave, helmet or in mobile devices.
With this, FORAN keeps being an advanced shipbuilding CAD/CAM system.
