In order to face the competition of world-class shipyards, large shipyards have to increase the application of information technology. The ship design process is one of critical factors that determine the cost, quality, and cycle of the product. As a result, there exists a large amount of knowledge for the ship design process, which severely limits the designer’s efforts to improve the quality of the ship product. On the other hand, it also reflects the urgent need for ship design by application of KBE methodology to change the current status. According to the ship design features, Kawasaki Heavy Industries of Japan developed a design system combined a knowledge base with macro instructions, which could design a rational hull structure in accordance with every specific circumstance ; University of Rostock in Germany planned the Ship Information and Communication System and Knowledge Based Design of Ship Structure Elements in research programs, which could deduce or calculate the design basis through application of knowledge methods and provide tools from the knowledge base; Helvacioglu make goal driven approach for the initial design stage of ship hull structure, integrate design knowledge into design system, achieve a highly efficient and flexible design environment; Park summarize the development of expert system in ship design and manufacture, identifying that the expert system can significantly improve the efficiency and quality of the ship design and manufacture; Lee apply knowledge-based engineering to the general arrangement of the engine room as well as application of knowledge-mining to ship design, making full use of engineering knowledge data accumulated to improve design quality.