Digital Charts for Marine Construction Activities: MicroCAD Approach

Abstract

This paper describes the design and development of an efficient, inexpensive, and fully automated method of generating accurate off‐line digital charts from microcomputers. The method involves the integration of existing data acquisition systems, both analog and digital or a hybrid of the two, with a Micro‐computer‐Aided‐Design (MicroCAD) workstation. Software bridges link three different, but related, phases of the digital production cycle into a continuous chain of activities. These three phases are data capture (represented by modules EDIT‐DAT and ED1TCON), data processing (represented by modules SEAFIX and SEA‐DEPTH), and data presentation (represented by module SEAPLOT). The end products of this work cycle are CAD based digital charts ready for engineers to use in their design and construction work cycles. Accuracy testing on charts prepared by the software with those prepared manually reveal that the proposed method is an acceptable method of generating off‐line charts for marine construction activities.