Cargo-Planner Docs

Breakbulk vessels

A breakbulk vessel — a multi-purpose ship whose cargo is loaded piece-by-piece into large holds rather than in standard containers — is not a dedicated equipment type in Cargo-Planner. It is composed from features that already exist in the app: Set Builder for the arrangement of holds, custom containers for each hold, contours for the tapered bow and stern, and components for the tween decks and internal geometry inside a hold.

This page describes how those pieces fit together. Each section links to the reference page that documents the mechanics.

The composition

A breakbulk vessel is a Set whose members are custom containers. The Set represents the vessel; each container represents one of its holds. This is the same shape used to describe a container ship, a road train or an aircraft with named cargo bays — see Set builder.

Set Builder is an Enterprise subscription feature. If your account does not include it, the Vessels tab in the equipment library is not visible.

Modelling a hold

Each hold is a custom container in the container editor. Three tabs matter:

  • General — large L, W and H, the vessel’s payload split across its holds, and the geometry toggles from open containers if the hold is loaded from above.
  • Contours — triangular cuts at the bow and stern corners of the hold to describe the taper of the hull. Rotate the 3D preview to check that the tapers meet the intended hull line.
  • Components — corner posts, frames and mezzanine Floor components. A floor component placed at a non-zero Z acts as a tween deck, and cargo above and below is planned around it.

Composing the vessel

Once each hold is defined, add them to a Set in Equipment → Vessels → New. Holds are positions — the actual containers placed in the vessel — and groups are named slots that organise them, typically by deck level or by fore, midship and aft. Two identical holds go in as two positions inside one group; alternative layouts the solver may pick between — a group that could hold one long hold or two shorter ones — live as configurations on that group. See Groups, positions and configurations for the underlying model.

Per-hold adjustments — a slightly deeper hold three, a heavier payload on hold one — are stored as overrides on the position, not on the container type. The Set’s underlying custom container stays intact. See the Inspector panel.

Using the vessel in a load plan

On the Setup step, open the Sets tab and add the vessel as a set type the load plan may use. The solver treats the whole vessel as one unit and places cargo across its holds according to the layout, subject to the usual primary settings, custom rules and segregation between hazardous items.