Development and lessons learned of a block-based conceptual submarine design tool for graduate education

This paper covers the development, challenges, and initial lessons learned from the creation of a new block-based conceptual submarine design tool to support maritime graduate education at Delft University of Technology. The authors developed a design tool to assist students with the weight balancing, general arrangements creation, and automatic visualization of a military submarine. The tool is based in MS Excel and Rhinoceros 3D (Rhino). As an educational tool available to all students, there were certain constraints on the software platform that existed to ensure fair, open access to all students. This paper aims to describe the rationale behind how the current submarine design tool works, and some of the challenges the authors faced when implementing this tool in a 10 week complex marine design course. Lessons learned from both an educational and tool development perspective will be presented as well as areas for future improvements of the tool.