The sophisticated 3D based synthesis that is enabled by the UCL Design Building Block (DBB) approach means the designer can model distributed ship service system(s) (DS3) physical entities to whatever level of detail deemed necessary well beyond the DS3 concept design level. The high flexibility of the Paramarine ship design toolset, particularly the descriptive ability provided by the DBB objects through storing data at different levels of design granularity, enables design exploration to different levels of design hierarchy. However, several drawbacks have been found in implementing such a sophisticated (fully 3-D) modelling tool in Early Stage Ship Design (ESSD). These include the effort to model or create each of the numerous features and placing them individually in the vessel’s configuration. The paper presents the development of an ESSD tool that can rapidly generate a submarine early stage design with significant DS3 definition. That definition is sufficiently descriptive but still general enough to allow the level of flexibility in design exploration required at early design stages. The tool aimed to make the 3D based synthesis execution process as simple as possible so that the designer is able to manipulate the 3D architecture of the vessel and focus on important architecturally driven decision making in ESSD. An ocean going conventionally powered submarine case study was undertaken and demonstrated the capability and the flexibility of the tool
