MakaiLay is the software of choice for cable installations with more than 100,000 route kilometers of cable laid worldwide.

Pre-lay planning with MakaiPlan Pro and MakaiLay lowers the risk of installation failure to a level where the planner is comfortable that “the cable can be properly laid” if everything goes as planned. However, quality of the actual installation will depend on the at-sea operations and how well the personnel can cope with last-minute changes and emergency situations. Cable installations rarely go exactly as planned, and MakaiLay provides at-sea personnel with the tools to deal with these changing conditions.

Cable engineers no longer need to spend countless hours at-sea trying to guess the shape of the submerged cable based on “simplified steady-state” or “simplified transient” approximation tools. MakaiLay provides operators with a more sophisticated and validated model to greatly enhance their ability to deliver a properly installed system.

At any point in time MakaiLay provides a meaningful 3D-Model of the submerged cable, including transients due to ship speed and course changes and those due to the effect of heavy optical amplifiers or cable transitions.

The operator can take advantage of MakaiLay’s AutoSlack feature to calculate how fast the cable engine should run in order to achieve target slack on the seabed. The operator may issue these instructions to the cable engine operator manually, via a graphic display, or the MakaiLay system can control the cable engine directly (on select cable engines).

Your competition has it, shouldn’t you?

MakaiLay 3.0 is the latest release of Makai’s at-sea installation software and is part of a complete suite of cable lay software that includes MakaiPlan and MakaiPlanPro. The new MakaiLay includes many new features since its original release in 2001. Primary enhancements include:

The code has undergone years of testing during sea trials and real cable installations by more than 20 new and highly automated cable laying vessels used by the major telecom companies throughout the world. Most of the feature improvements have been driven by user requests.

Runs on Windows XP or Windows 2000.

The 3D Cable Model now has a Top Tension Control mode when laying cable under tension on the seafloor. The correlation between the numeric model and physical cable configuration is greatly improved since long-term cable length measurement errors do not affect the solution.

The MakaiLay software now uses a Kalman filter for the ship speed and positions used for display and cable engine control. The filter is based on a physical model of the ship motion and can be tuned to match the dynamics of the vessel in use and the present sea state conditions.

The GIS-Plan View can now be rotated to provide a more compact view of the vessel when it sails along track at any heading. A North arrow has also been added.

The use of ocean currents is now supported by the cable model in MakaiLay 3.0. Tools to edit and manipulate constant current profiles or time-varying currents, such as tidal components, are now included. In addition, Makai can provide custom data logging for your specific Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP).

Direct control of cable engine speed is now possible with cable engines from select manufacturers. This feature is particularly beneficial during long transients where the ideal surface slack continuously changes. Manually controlling the cable engine speed during these conditions is operator-intensive and tiresome. A recent Trans-Pacific cable lay, in water depths in excess of 9000 meters, was deployed by MakaiLay with fully automated control of the cable engine.

The improved 3D finite element cable model can also be used for applications such as seismic arrays, flexible pipes, and deployment of scientific and defense arrays. Over 100 cable bodies and joints can now be simultaneously modeled in the water column.

New reporting charts provide fast access to long-term trends in ship speed, cable engine speed and lay status information over the last 24 hours. Trend charts can be printed and annotated for daily reports on lay operations.

New fast dynamic tools compute optimum payout rates during transients and emergency situations.

Improved utilities have been included for creating final As-Laid Positioning List in a GIS database and exporting results to AutoCAD compatible (DXF) format in various projections.

Improved RPL import utilities now exist which include bodies and slack changes.

The Helmsman’s computer on the bridge can now display the target track line for the vessel based on the current MakaiLay instructions. By simply drawing a new route on the active MakaiLay workstation, the helmsman’s computer will automatically show the updated track without any user intervention.

Switching between master and slave for the two MakaiLay workstations has been improved. The procedure is more efficient and requires less operator effort. The operator simply transfers all the remote MakaiLayClient users over to the secondary MakaiLay workstations by one mouse-click without any user intervention on the client computers.

The 3D Viewer now has the capability to display the bottom profile as a surface making it much easier to get a good 3D impression of the seabed. If a complete 3D terrain is available from survey data, selected portions can be shown in the 3D-Viewer.

The Track Status display now includes KP-based information such as “Distance to next AC” for selected vehicles such as ship or plow.

Annotations can be added to the GIS database based on positions of multiple vehicles making it much easier to annotate the map with plow related events.

Line printer output allows for a backup paper copy of data from customized tables. Data can be printed at various intervals.

MakaiLay 3.0 has more efficient file storage for lay data and is backward compatible with lay data from previous versions. The system has mechanisms for preventing disk-fragmentation which can potentially lower computer performance.

Post-lay analysis of cable length measurement errors can be completed and final as-laid results can be presented based on factory lengths or as-measured lengths. At-sea repairs require editing of the cable assembly and these revisions are highlighted, so that the operator can double-check and verify the distances of the new sections before creating official as-laid results.

Multiple enhancements have been made in user interface and preparation of final reports.

Your competition has it, shouldn't you?