Pump room visualization

The Gerald R. Ford is the first-ever aircraft carrier to be constructed based on designs that were first done in a 3D collaborative visualization tool called ROVR.

What makes this software particularly useful to the Navy and to Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding is that it allows all the various stakeholders in the ship's construction--the Navy, the shipbuilders, contractors, welders, pipefitters, and so on--to examine the plans, in 3D, in advance of beginning to build the ship.

That means that it is now possible to weed out many of the design inefficiencies that have slowed previous shipbuilding projects because, for instance, one stakeholder can say to another that their piping plans won't work because they would make it impossible to pull parts out for maintenance without cutting a hole in the ceiling. In the past, that hole would most likely have had to be cut. But now, they can fix that problem in the design stage. It also offers many other benefits, and over the course of the construction of the Gerald R. Ford, is expected to save 2 million manhours of labor.