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In plain terms: Forge does not ask you to replace anything. Your CAD tools still author geometry and your maintenance system still runs the work. Forge supplies the thing none of them can produce on their own: a reliable model of a ship that already exists.

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Forge sits upstream of your tools

Design and analysis tools all assume you already have a usable model. For a vessel in service, that assumption is usually wrong. Forge is the step that comes before them. The principle is simple. Forge does not compete for the authoring seat. It produces and maintains the model, and it keeps the evidence attached to it.

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Open formats, no lock-in

A model you cannot take with you is not an asset. Forge reads and writes open formats:

STEP

Standard exchange of engineering geometry, in and out. Your model goes back into your own tools whenever you want it.

glTF

Lightweight display geometry for fast viewing, review, and sharing without shipping the engineering model around.

OCX

The open structural exchange format for ship design, so structural data moves between systems without being flattened.
There is no proprietary format that holds your ship hostage. If you stop using Forge, you keep the model.

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A phased rollout, not a rip-and-replace

No fleet halts operations to overhaul its systems, so adoption is incremental. Each phase produces something usable on its own and builds the data the next one needs.
1

One work package on one vessel

Start narrow. Reconstruct and reconcile a single bounded scope where the result can be checked against something you already know. Lowest risk, fastest verification.
2

One full availability

Extend to a complete drydock scope. Reconcile the model before the work package goes out, so planning happens against real condition rather than assumed condition.
3

A living model across the survey cycle

Keep the model reconciled between availabilities. Inspection findings, repairs, and retrofits update it as they happen instead of being reconstructed later.
4

Fleet-wide, with reuse

Roll out across sister ships and repeat part families, where resolved components carry forward instead of being rebuilt hull by hull.

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Where it runs

Ship structural data is sensitive, and some of it is defense-adjacent. Deployment is built for that:
  • On-premise or private cloud. The model and its sources can stay inside your own environment.
  • Database-level isolation. Each customer’s data is isolated at the database itself, not just in application code, so no customer’s data is visible to another.
  • Sensitivity-aware processing. Where a piece of data is allowed to be processed is a recorded policy, not a runtime preference.
See Keeping Your Data Yours for the full detail.

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It starts in observe-only mode

When Forge first arrives it runs in observe-only mode. It reconstructs, reconciles, and flags, but nothing it produces is treated as authoritative. This phase runs for at least 90 days. It lets the system learn your vessels, your drawing conventions, and your naming, and it lets your engineers build confidence before any output influences real repair work.