> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://www.docs.forgeshipyard.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# What's Next

> Where the reconstruction work stands today and what we are building next.

<Note>
  **In plain terms:** We have reconstructed a ship's hull structure from 2D drawings
  into 3D, end to end, on a real vessel. Next we are taking the same pipeline
  inward, to the piping, engines, and smaller parts, and then outward, to reviving
  dead 3D CAD files into editable ones.
</Note>

## Where we are

The hull structure milestone is complete. We can take a real vessel's legacy 2D
drawing set and reconstruct its hull structure as an inspectable 3D model, with
the evidence and the open questions still attached.

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Proven on a real ship, not synthetic data" icon="ship">
    Balclutha, an 1886 steel-hulled sailing cargo ship, reconstructed end to end
    from the historical measured drawing set: 71 drawing sheets and 240 survey
    data pages.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Reproduced the published research" icon="flask">
    We extracted and verified the major public reference datasets for 3D ship
    reconstruction and reproduced the field's key published work on turning 2D
    ship drawings into 3D hull models.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Every part checked against precedent" icon="magnifying-glass">
    Reconstructed components are checked against the vessel's own type and class
    precedent, so unsupported regions get flagged as open questions rather than
    generated.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Inspectable, not just rendered" icon="cube">
    The result decomposes and recomposes without losing identities, and every
    numeric claim traces to the measurement record behind it.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

You can inspect the result yourself in the
[Balclutha Evidence Workbench](/research-cases/balclutha-evidence-workbench).

## What we are building next

<Steps>
  <Step title="Internal systems: piping, engines, and smaller parts">
    The hull is the structure. The work inside it is where most repair scope
    actually lives. We are extending the same 2D-to-3D pipeline to internal piping
    runs, machinery and engines, and the smaller components that populate a
    machinery space.

    This is harder than hull structure for a specific reason. Hull geometry is
    continuous and heavily constrained by naval architecture, which gives a
    reconstruction strong priors to check against. Piping and machinery are
    discrete, densely packed, drawn in many different conventions, and frequently
    modified without the drawings being updated. The evidence discipline matters
    more here, not less.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Dead 3D CAD into editable, deconstructable models">
    A large share of vessels do have a 3D file. It is just unusable: a frozen
    export, a format nobody supports anymore, or a single fused solid with no
    structure, no part boundaries, and no way to change anything.

    We are building the path from those dead files to fully editable and
    deconstructable models: recovering part boundaries and identities, restoring
    the assembly hierarchy, and returning geometry that an engineer can actually
    modify rather than only look at.

    The difference matters in repair. You cannot plan a steel renewal, a
    modification, or a part replacement against a model you can only rotate.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## An adjacent application

The dead-CAD capability is not ship-specific. The same problem exists anywhere
physical equipment outlives the software that designed it.

Machinery OEMs and suppliers hold large archives of exactly this kind of data:
legacy drawings and frozen CAD for parts that are still in service and still need
repairing, long after the original design environment is gone. Reconstructing that
data into editable, deconstructable models has the same shape as the ship problem
and the same trigger, a repair that cannot be planned without a usable model.

<Info>
  This is an adjacent direction we are tracking, not a near-term product. The
  sequencing is deliberate: prove the reconstruction and reconciliation work with
  real vessel operators first. Ships stay the focus.
</Info>

## How to read progress claims in these docs

We try to keep three things clearly separated so the roadmap stays honest:

| Status           | What it means                                                                                    |
| ---------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Demonstrated** | Built and shown on real source material, with the result inspectable and the method reproducible |
| **In progress**  | Actively being built, with the approach settled but the result not yet verified                  |
| **Exploring**    | A direction we believe in, without committed work behind it yet                                  |

Hull structure reconstruction is demonstrated. Internal systems and dead-CAD
revival are in progress. The machinery OEM application is exploring.

The [Research Log](/research-log/overview) tracks this work week by week, including
the parts that did not go as planned.