A Governance-Aware Methodological Framework for Cognitive AI Integration in Marine CAD: A Conceptual Pipe Routing Use Case

This paper proposes a governance-aware methodological framework for the integration of Cognitive Artificial Intelligence into marine CAD environments. Unlike existing approaches that focus on isolated optimization or prediction tasks, the proposed framework introduces a structured architecture combining engineering knowledge corpora, hybrid AI reasoning, and CAD-based interaction within a traceable and regulatory-aware workflow. The contribution of this work is methodological rather than domain-exhaustive. The framework is illustrated through a conceptual pipe routing use case, selected as a representative high-constraint design subsystem involving spatial reasoning, compliance verification, and iterative coordination. A normalized performance evaluation model is defined to estimate improvements in design efficiency, convergence, compliance validation and rework reduction. Although the validation is conceptual, the results are consistent with reported improvements in AI-assisted engineering workflows. The proposed framework gives a basis for integrating AI into marine CAD environments, aligned with newer digital ship design and Shipyard 4.0 approaches.