The first NAPA Release of 2025 is now available.

NAPA Release 2025.1 highlights include:

• New stability regulations
• Enhanced support for detail structural design
• Simpler and Faster FEM Analysis

Besides the highlighted new development, the new NAPA Release includes plenty of user-requested improvements related to geometry modeling, stability analysis and structural design. The new functionality, updates and changes in the software have been included in the NAPA Release Notes 2025.1 document, available in NAPAnet, with the installation media.

The release image features an innovative KAMSARMAX bulk carrier design by Tsuneishi Shipbuilding Co., Ltd, designed with NAPA.

New stability regulation

Wind-assisted propulsion systems (WAPS) are becoming more and more common in commercial vessel designs to improve ships’ operational efficiency and accommodate the new environmental requirements over the ships’ life cycles. NAPA Release 2025.1 supports the class rules of DNV, BV and ClassNK in the stability rule compliance analysis of ships equipped with WAPS.

Due to the growing demand for renewable energy and offshore wind farms, the floating offshore wind turbines face continuously evolving stability requirements. The new software version supports DNV’s latest floating stability requirements for offshore wind turbines.

The Second Generation Intact Stability (SGIS) rule compliance assessment consists of five different failure modes, being assessed in three different levels. In case the level 1 and 2 checks are not complied with, the complicated and expensive direct stability assessment (DSA) of the level 3 can be replaced with a ship-specific operational guidance (OG) to avoid dangerous conditions. NAPA Release 2025.1 supports the calculation of simplified operational guidance (SOG) for parametric roll, by providing more information about the critical operational conditions.

 The implementation is based on the time-domain solution of the roll motion equation. A research paper is publicly available on the calculation methods applied for implementation.

The International Grain Code (IGC) was amended in the IMO resolution MSC.552(108). NAPA Release 2025.1 supports the new loading condition type “partial filling in way of the hatch opening, with ends untrimmed”, as defined in the amended IGC.

Enhanced support for detail structural design

NAPA has been extending the structural design functionality to support the detail design needs. In NAPA Release 2025.1, for example, a new Sketch Tool has been introduced to draw reference lines, add annotations, and experiment with different design ideas directly on the 3D model.

We have also focused on improving the software performance, especially in handling large and complex models. The database read/write operations have been optimized, resulting in over 40% faster project opening times in our recent benchmark tests. In addition, several improvements to NAPA Drafting are in progress to support more efficient creation of detail hull drawings. These enhancements will continue in upcoming NAPA Releases.

Simpler and faster finite element analysis

To streamline the complex finite element meshing (FEM) and analysis (FEA) workflow, the preprocessing capabilities have been improved and a new Finite Element Analysis (FEA) feature has been introduced as an alpha version in NAPA Designer 2025.1.

The development has been based on user expectations and prior R&D efforts towards an ideal approach – performing finite element analysis directly on the 3D model. This speeds up the design process significantly, rather than going through the time-consuming process of exporting a mesh to an external solver, finalizing the mesh, setting up boundary conditions, running the analysis, evaluating results and manually reflecting them back into the 3D model.

The new functionality enables a faster and simpler structural analysis workflow and is available as an alpha version, i.e., the development will be continued for the upcoming NAPA Releases. The functionality is currently available to all users to gather feedback for future development.

Experience the benefits of these by downloading the latest NAPA versions!