During my recent trip to see several Dutch superyacht yards, sponsored by HISWA, I toured Heesen Yachts’ facility. We started the day visiting the in-house design and engineering departments, where drawings of the yard’s various offerings are transformed into 3-D representations on computers. While computer-aided drawing is nothing new, 3-D is a newer practice, growing in popularity among megayacht builders worldwide. It allows the staff to see systems layouts and installations before the first pipe is put into place.

I shot the following video to give a better sense of how a yacht goes from concept to completion at Heesen. To be clear, the scenes are of various projects, not just one (after all, a megayacht can’t be built in a day…). It’s also worth noting that Heesen continues to build both under-contract and on-spec projects, the latter despite the economic crisis, since it says it is financially stable enough to do so.