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Best practice or guide for real world plant design

11 REPLIES 11
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Message 1 of 12
intratech
1105 Views, 11 Replies

Best practice or guide for real world plant design

We have a very successful P3D launching seminar the day before yesterday.
Invited guests were mostly intergraph, Aveva experts.
One of the guest raised a question on performance,
As we showed NwNavigate (Navisworks control in Autocad) ,
Synchronizing Zoom, rotate, pan, walk ...every navigate features work file.
All audience were surprised at the performance.

However I'm still afraid of the performance of P3D,

is there any guide for optimal modeling?
for example, for the acceptable performance in 2GB RAM Pc,
Recommended maximum number of piping components in a DWG is 200 (for example) or whatever.

Do you have any test case? Edited by: intratech on Apr 8, 2010 2:48 PM
11 REPLIES 11
Message 2 of 12
Anonymous
in reply to: intratech

TC,

We're working on some recommendations for large project configuration, but
don't have anything to share just yet. Your figure of 200 components per DWG
is very low. Our expectation is that users will need to be able to put
several thousand components in a DWG.

What sort of performance issues concern you? Is it graphics performance such
as how large a model can be easily manipulated in shaded mode?
Or, is it data issues such as how many components can be in a project before
it bogs down?

Peter Quinn (Autodesk)

wrote in message news:6369274@discussion.autodesk.com...
We have a very successful P3D launching seminar the day before yesterday.
Invited guests were mostly intergraph, Aveva experts.
One of the guest raised a question on performance,
As we showed NwNavigate (Navisworks control in Autocad) ,
Synchronizing Zoom, rotate, pan, walk ...every navigate features work file.
All audience were surprised at the performance.

However I'm still afraid of the performance of P3D,

is there any guide for optimal modeling?
for example, for the acceptable performance in 2GB RAM Pc,
Recommended maximum number of piping components in a DWG is 200 (for
example) or whatever.

Do you have any test case?

Edited by: intratech on Apr 8, 2010 2:48 PM
Message 3 of 12
MMSW
in reply to: intratech

Hi intratech,

I've been working with P3D for the past 6 months and I should say that regarding performance, P3D is too slow, I'm working with a very powerful machin, 24 GB RAM, my model contains 100 Pipes and 30 equipments and It hardly can rotate the model. It takes up to 20 Sec to just select a pipe specially when some pipes and equipments are connected to each other. To my experience, regarding performance, P3D is far too behind other similar packages.

Regards
Message 4 of 12
Mulus
in reply to: intratech

First select line or none p3d object ant then select p3d object. Than plant 3D selection is much faster 🙂
Message 5 of 12
Anonymous
in reply to: intratech

Having done a few large plants, this is a brief overview of the way we
approached them. Basically we used xref's extensively

We had a separate file for each line number, Steel floor, Mechanical
equipment, pumps, electrical etc. and everything was located by the site 0,0
therefore when we xrefed in a pump it came in, in the correct location. By
having separate files it is also easier to solve problems with Isogen and if
the file becomes corrupted you are not loosing too much information.

We only brought into the pipe model the items that were required, where it
was going from and where it was going to plus steel and any pipes it had to
miss. Pipe supports where kept on the pipe model so if the line changes the
supports could be updated as well.

For viewing we used Navisworks.

Firstly in AutoCAD we created an assembly drawing for each of the
disciplines for example the Pipe model contained xref's of all the piping.
Each assembly was then appended into a master Navisworks NWF file, this way
any views or comments could be added later.

By doing this the Navisworks NWF was a live model, each time it was opened
and if an AutoCAD model had changed this would be updated in the Navisworks
model as well. This was ideal for review meetings where views with comments
were created and then during the next review meeting they were looked at to
see if the comments had been acted on.

NWD files were created as needed.
Message 6 of 12
MMSW
in reply to: intratech

Mulus,

Thanks a lot, it works and it's much faster now, you were a great help to me.
Message 7 of 12
intratech
in reply to: intratech

Hi Patrick,

I think your approach is very practical for a large scale project,
and I don't see any performance issue even with 2,000 pippeline , 300 M$ project.

However , in the case, we need a strong administration tool for drawing manage along with ACL(drawing Access Control List) and UCL(User Control List).

Probably Peter has some idea.
Message 8 of 12
intratech
in reply to: intratech

Great Tip!!! Thank you.
Message 9 of 12
MMSW
in reply to: intratech

Patrick ,
Regarding "Extensive use of Xrefs" and having separate files for each pipe, could you explain how you then connect pipes to each other or take branches from pipes when they are modelled in differenet dwg files?
Regards
Message 10 of 12
Anonymous
in reply to: intratech

For example:

You have a tank with 2 pumps a pipe from the tank to the header pipe and 2
suction pipes.

Create the tank and pumps and locate them in there proper locations. This is
3 drawing files.

Create a new drawing and xref in the tank and pumps as overlays, next work
out your pipe route. You can create all in one and break them up later or do
a rough layout first and use this to create the rest. The two suction lines
will probably be the same so you can finish off one and copy it across and
renumber the second line.

For your question if you want to create the header pipe you can xref in the
2 suction lines as overlays, since they are already in there proper site
location you xref them in at 0,0 you then create your header pipe which
connects to the suction pipes. Save this file the same as the line number.

To create the pipe from the header to the tank xref in the header pipe and
tank and connect them.
Message 11 of 12
MMSW
in reply to: intratech

Patrick,

Thanks for the response. Regarding your method I have a problem when I connect a pipe from a dwg to the middle of another pipe which is Xrefed and use STUB IN connection, a drop is shown at the connection which means they are not connected properly. Have you had this issue ?

Regards
Message 12 of 12
Anonymous
in reply to: intratech

In reality your main line would already have a short stub to match up with
the branch line, this stub might only extend 150mm from the side of the
pipe. You would then weld your branch line to the stub.

This stub would be done in the workshop, if you weld a long length it
becomes difficult to transport.

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