Book Description

As the National Steel and Shipbuilding Company (NASSCO) set out to use SPADES, an internal company organization for its use emerged, resulting in an effective working relationship among the various departments of the company. These departments are Engineering, Production, and Computer Services. The NASSCO organization for SPADES evolved along regular functional lines within the departments affected. Loftsmen, who used to make full size wooden templates on the mold loft floor, are now the Numerical Control (N/C) programmers who cause the N/C tapes to be made. Engineers, who issue preliminary unfaired ships lines, are now able to complete the job, since the fairing operation does not require a drafting board the size of the mold loft floor. Computer service personnel, who run the company computer, have added SPADES to the services they provide. And finally, the responsibility for control of the SPADES system is assigned to the Computer Support Group in the Engineering Department, which has charge of all scientific and engineering programs used by the Engineering Department. The user functions are divided between engineering and production. There are eight SPADES modules, three of which are used by the Engineering Department, three used by the Mold Loft, and two used jointly or by either as needed. The three engineering modules are: the Fairing and Drawing module; the Hulload module; and the Hullcal module, which is a package of naval architecture routines. The three modules used by the Mold Loft are: Part Generation module, which produces information and a tape for drawing the part; Nesting module, which produces a tape of nested parts for the burning machine; and Plate Development module, which produces tapes for burning shell plates. The Manufacturing Aids module is used jointly by Production and Engineering. Another joint-use module is the Utility module. This is a group of five programs used for direct access to the data base.