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AEC From the Ground Up-Plant Design Progress
1 Jan, 2006 By: AIA ,H. Edward GoldbergThe latest in P&ID and piping programs.
With much of today's industry dependent on processes that involve the moving of liquids and gases, there is an ever-greater need for software dedicated to the design of these infrastructures. As I've mentioned in previous articles, these offerings create designs that fall into two broad groups: 2D schematics such as P&IDs (piping and instrument diagrams), and the physical design, which comprises 2D and 3D deliverables.
Software vendors have worked hard over the past years to produce tools for both schematics and the physical design that are easier to use and capable of producing deliverables that have value at each stage of the design and engineering process.
We are now seeing more 3D-based design packages at all price levels that automatically produce the 2D deliverables, reports and bills of materials that in the past were available only in higher-priced offerings.
Generally, most of these plant design solutions run on either AutoCAD or MicroStation. Some offerings, such as those from AVEVA and Intergraph, use their own graphics engine and output to either of the above widely used applications.
This article is an overview of some available products and their features. As always, be informed—go to vendor Web sites to get a better view of their offerings, and if possible, request a demonstration on one of your own projects.
AEC Design Group CADPIPE, ArTrA
CADPIPE, from AEC Design Group, is a series of AutoCAD-based applications for piping and plant design. CADPIPE Industrial 3D is the flagship option for creating 3D plant models. Its features include an equipment generator, automatic pipe placement, collision checking and automatic isometric drawing generation. CADPIPE P&ID handles creation of flow diagrams and P&IDs and can bidirectionally link to an external database such as Access, Oracle and others. CADPIPE ISO and CADPIPE Ortho applications are also available.
Once plant designs are created, ArTrA manages 3D assets for plant lifecycle management. It works with models from a variety of CAD applications. The ArTrA Librarian is used to create a database of information that links to items in the design model so that users can search for plant items and their associated data such as maintenance history, parts list, data sheets and so on.
AVEVA VANTAGE Suite
AVEVA offers four products in its VANTAGE series. VANTAGE Plant Design is a comprehensive modeling system that creates 3D designs and deliverables (figure 1). It features model management, advanced clash management, automated drawing production, visual review, automatic pipe routing and construction deliverables. Standard automated deliverables can be generated directly from the 3D model in the form of general arrangement drawings, piping isometrics and reports. The product comes with industry catalogs and specifications, and the entire Victaulic piping specifications catalog is available at no charge. In March 2006, AVEVA will launch a new Pipe Stress Interface, which will provide data integration between piping designs and stress analysis tools.
 Figure 1. P&ID diagram viewed through VNET, AVEVA s Web information and collaboration portal. |
VANTAGE Plant Engineering is an engineering data management system, built on Oracle technology, that can be operated across globally distributed project teams. The VANTAGE Plant Engineering P&ID drafting application uses AutoCAD or MicroStation as its underlying CAD engine. It manages the flow of engineering data from its own database, front-end process data, P&ID, the 3D model, project control and material management databases. Client-specific and industry-standard tag numbering and symbology conventions are followed, which ensures that the product can be used across a wide range of industries such as offshore, onshore, power, food and pharma.
Bentley Systems Bentley Plant
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About the Author: H. Edward Goldberg
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