Detailed design

Detailed design is the engineering phase that converts the approved basic and contract design into the exact information needed to buy material and build the ship: scantling drawings, system diagrams, equipment specifications, and the structural and outfitting models that class approves. It precedes production design, which then breaks that information into work packages, nesting, and block drawings for the shop floor. Detailed design fixes the structure against the class rules and the IACS Common Structural Rules where they apply, sizes piping and electrical systems, and resolves interferences in the 3D model before steel is cut. Errors caught here are cheap; the same error found at erection is not.