China's 3D-designed Haixun 160 goes into service
The world's first 3D-designed ship, China's Haixun 160, which will be responsible for the maintenance of navigation marks in near harbors in the East China Sea, went into operation on Saturday with the Donghai Navigation Safety Administration.
China's largest "navigation ship" was built by the Jiangnan Shipyard Group.
It is 73.34 meters long and 14 meters wide, with a displacement of 2,300 tons when loaded.
Huang Chun, head of the Shanghai AtoN (Aids to Navigation) Center, said that compared with other navigation ships, Haixun 160 has an advanced wireless radio detector, with which the ship will also be able to monitor and evaluate the radio navigation system that is widely used on the East China sea.
Zhou Xuekun, the ship's chief engineer, said he didn’t even use one piece of paper while designing and building the ship. Zhou has been building ships for more than 15 years.
He allocated three months for the engineers and workers to build different parts of the ship and put them together. But it actually took the team only one month to finish the job.
“Workers no longer had to look at an obscure 2D blueprint," Zhou said. "Every detail of the ship can be seen on the 3D model, all they needed was a laptop or an iPad.”
The Donghai Navigation Safety Administration is based in Shanghai.
Engineers can check the design and details of the ship on an iPad instead of the traditional way, which involved a paper blueprint.
Haixun 160, the first "navigation ship" in the world designed with 3D modeling software, started service with the Donghai Navigation Safety Administration on Saturday.
