A brief discussion with a shipyard today. Their vision is to have a virtual product model of the vessel available for the fitters, welders and shipwrights on the floor so that they can rotate, zoom in, zoom out, pan and analyze areas of the product model that will help them assemble the vessel. This will be combined with isometric assembly drawings with minimal annotation and dimensions. Makes for clean and low effort production drawings, increases the responsibility on the production floor to look carefully at the product model and see what the intent to build is. The care and guidance is focused on the sequence and Lean process. The waste in this case is the duplication of providing dimensions on coded and computer-cut parts.
The product model can be started at concept, and matured throughout the design spiral.
This is the way of the future as I see it.
