Abstract: Abstract: The ship compartment partition and arrangement is the constantly repetitive work with a broad range of knowledge. Most of the previous ways are using man-machine interaction provided by software, complete the ship compartments partition by repeated design and stepwise refinement, or build equipment graphics library based on menu management through secondary development of some aided softwares, and finish the ship compartment partition by calling the graphics. Computer aid design/made (CAD/CAM) application has improved the design accuracy and contributed to improve the ship design and construction efficiency, but still these are try design methods. With the intelligent technology, expert system on ship compartment partition and arrangement design is established. Cabin intelligent design expert system based on parallel design method is a combined design process and evaluation process, and it unifies the knowledge engineering and computer aided software which is mainly based on the knowledge of the expert system, and the use of computer aided software realizes the intelligent ship design. This paper provides a theoretical basis for the solution of the main design parameters, laid a theoretical and technical foundation for seeking a new way of ship compartment arrangement design. Due to too much repetitive work, wide range of knowledge, and rules and regulations in design process being often ignored by designer, this paper puts forward an intelligent design method of fishing vessel cabin compartments, explores the cabin intelligent design method based on expert system applied in the design of the fishing vessel, provides a design method for a ship compartment design. In this paper, the overview of the development and its application in shipbuilding is analyzed, and domestic and international situation and development trend of intelligent design technology system as well as the basic theory and key technology of intelligent design such as composition, acquisition, representation and usage of knowledge are studied. According to the design features of ship compartment partition and arrangement, using expert system to solve such problems is proposed. And the theory and application genetic algorithm is introduced. Knowledge base and reasoning systems on ship compartment partition and arrangement is built. And compartments channel design is optimized using genetic algorithm. CATIA V5 software is secondary development in this system of knowledge engineering module. The overall structure and basic process framework of intelligent design is built according to compartment design features, and knowledge-based intelligent design system of ship compartments partition is developed using VB (visual basic), which is then applied to a 49.5 m tuna fishing vessel design and its accuracy and practicability of the procedures is verified. The development of the program realizes that the less data is needed to input to promote the rapid modeling ability, make the compartment in the fishing rules satisfy the specification at the same time, and at least can shorten the whole ship design cycle by 5-10 working days. It provides the theory and technology reference for the intelligent design of fishing boats.