HELSINKI, Finland, Jun 20, 2025 – NAPA is pleased to announce that, its NAPA Release 2025.1 has been published! 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 regulations
Wind Assisted Propulsion Systems (WAPS)
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.
A new stability criterion for transient operating conditions, to analyze the sudden loss of inclining moment
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.
An example polar chart of a ship-specific simplified operational guidance to avoid parametric roll
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.Read the research paper
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.More about stability analysis
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.
Sketch Tool: Draw design ideas and intent 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.More about structural design
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.
Finite Element Analysis (FEA) in NAPA Designer
Experience the benefits of these by downloading the latest NAPA versions!
About NAPA
In its 30 years of operation, NAPA has become a global leader in software, services and data analysis for the maritime industry; providing best in class data-led solutions for safety, efficiency and productivity in both ship design and operations.
NAPA operates globally, with 11 offices across Asia, Europe and the Americas supported by its Helsinki headquarters. To date, NAPA has 420 user organizations for its design solutions and over 2,500 installations onboard vessels. For more information, visit www.napa.fi.
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