1. OCX Consortium
  2. About

The Consortium

Background

The APPROVED joint industry project (2016-2019) brought together expertise from the classification society DNV (formerly DNV GL) and the CAD/CAM software providers Aveva, Hexagon, Siemens and NAPA; along with ship designers and builders Kongsberg Maritime, Ulstein and Chantiers de l’Atlantique; as well as the 3D and PLM implementation specialists Digitread. The result of their combined efforts is the development of an interoperability specification that enables shipbuilders and class societies to engage in a fully digital workflow and sharing of the designer’s 3D model using a common specification: The Open Class 3D Exchange (OCX) standard. The APPROVED project being finished, the OCX Consortium (this Consortium) was founded in May 2021 to manage the evolutions of the exchange standard and ensure its promotion. The Consortium will keep the latest version of the exchange standard, abbrevated OCX, updated. The OCX exchange standard is public, which means that it can be downloaded by anybody and used under the terms of a public license.

The APPROVED Partners:

The purpose of the Consortium

  1. Increase maritime safety through transparent design documentation and processing of data concerning the design, verification and inspection of ships and floating offshore assets.
  2. Support the evolutions of the OCX standard and promote its use in the marine industry.
  3. Establish Conformance Classes to approve that the files exchanged by an application are in line with the standard.
  4. Act as a source of information on the development and implementation of OCX standard in the maritime industry.
  5. Encourage implementation and use of software interfaces according to the OCX standard.

The Consortium is a fully voluntary association between the members and is not a separate legal entity.

Membership

The Consortium is open to any operating organization agreeing to the terms set out in the Consortium Agreement.

There are two types of memberships:

  1. Full membership,
  2. Observer.

All Members shall have access to documents and data produced by the Consortium prior to release of this material to non-members.

All members may invite other parties for participation in an OCX Consortium meeting, for the purpose of bringing in technical expertise.

Full membership

Full members must be actively involved in the design, assessment, verification, inspection or software developments in the business domain for ships or offshore vessels design, construction, assessment and inspection.

A Full member:

  1. shall nominate one representative for the Steering Committee;
  2. has one vote in the Steering Committee;
  3. may attend any technical workshop and meeting organized by the Consortium;
  4. has access to all documents and data;
  5. may take over the role as Coordinator;
  6. is strongly encouraged to contribute actively to the technical goals of the Consortium; however, there is no minimum requirement for technical involvement.

Observer

Observers can contribute to the OCX Consortium through participating in technical discussions, naming requirements, proposing solutions.

An Observer:

  1. may attend and contribute to technical workshops and meetings, but not to Steering Committee meetings.
  2. has no voting rights in the Consortium but has access to all documents and data produced by the Consortium.
  3. An Observer can at any time apply for a Full Membership