11. RoPax Design Revisited—Evolution or Revolution?

The design development of a RoPAX vessel is very complex, in fact one can argue that stricter regulatory requirements and multitude of operational flexibility required by the owner and operator makes it one of the most challenging vessel types to bring any real improvement. Although the know-how and experience of the design team is vitally important, an optimising platform such as that offered by HOLISHIP can help develop design solutions much more tailored to the needs and challenges the prospective owner and the marketplace brings about. This application case demonstrates how a RoPAX design can be optimised by using the HOLISHIP platform. A number of critical ship design development tools and methods, particularly parametric modelling tools and their use in design optimisation, are presented and discussed. Although the focus of the optimisation problem and the complexity may vary the processed employed here demonstrates the capabilities and potential of the HOLISHIP platform. This chapter also offers an insight to the predicament of weather to follow traditional designs to meet owners’ specifications or make a special effort to accomplish something new, go beyond the norm.