Pipe bends / 180° bends

[r.imhof]

Situation:

In our 3D models we use both elbows and pipe bends.

While there is no issue with elbows, there are several with pipe bends.

At the ends of pipe bends the are 3D connectors defined as welds (just as with elbows).

This leads to several errors:

- Isometric drawings display welds, when in reality there are no welds.

- Cut piece lists are all wrong, as pipes connecting to a pipe bend are considered as separate straight pipes.

- Reports created on pipe lenghts therefore also give wrong numbers as the pipe lenghts of the bends are not included.

- The number of welds is wrong as well.

What we need:

The 3D connectors between bend and adjacent pipes needs to be of different type (preferrably not weld type).

This would solve problem of wrong display on isometric drawings and we could get correct number of welds in reports.

It would not solve the cut-piece lenght problem, but it would be an improvement.

Long description of pipe bends:

Additionally it would be nice if we could influence the generation of the long description (size) of pipe bends.

Right now it is generated with a combination of bend parameters + long description of the underlying pipe.

 If one is working with settings of high precision unit formats (several digits) in 3D model it is also represented in the long descripition.

This leads to exceedingly long descriptions which are not neccessary as the precision is not required for production (BOM), only for planning.

Example:

ROHRBOGEN, R=6", A=45.0000 GRAD, L1=0", L2=0", ROHRLÄNGE=4 91/128", PIPE, SEAMLESS, 3" ND, PE, ASME B36.19, ASTM A312 GR TP 304, SCH 40S

Also the display of L1 and L2 are useless for pipe bends as it is essentially just one pipe without additional pipe lenght at the end of the radius.

180° Bends:

Coordinates of 180° Bends are not correct in PCF and subsequently also wrong in isometric drawing. For demonstration a pipe with a 180° bend and radius 24mm is modelled in Plant3d. The lenght of both pipe ends is 200mm measured from  corner to pipe end (see attachement). In the PCF (see below) the coordinates of the corners (centre-points) are always offset by the dimension of the radius -> 224 instead of 200 (elevation).

BEND
    END-POINT        0.0000    0.0000    176.0000    10.0000  SW
    END-POINT        48.0000    -0.0000    176.0000    10.0000  SW
    CENTRE-POINT     0.0000    0.0000    224.0000
    CENTRE-POINT     48.0000    -0.0000    224.0000
    SKEY  BUBW
    ITEM-CODE  55204
    ITEM-DESCRIPTION  ROHRBOGEN, R=24, A=180 GRAD, L1=0, L2=0, ROHRLÄNGE=75.3982, Rohr 12,0x1,0mm(DIN)
    FABRICATION-ITEM
    ANGLE   18000
    PIPING-SPEC  S1

tl:dr

- Welds placed next to pipe bends and also in PCF as well als isometric drawing

- Cut piece list wrong for pipes with bends

- Reports based on pipe components give wrong lenghts. Number of welds are wrong.

- Automatically generated long description needs to be changeable

- Coordinates for 180° Bends are wrong"

[Anonymous]

as a prospective purchaser of multiple seats I am quite dismayed to see that this problem exists and even more so that there has been no continuation of this discussion.................not a single reply in 3 weeks............

[damian_willcox]

Hi r.imhof,

There are clearly some bugs and definitely some additional work and improvements we would like to do in the area of pipe bends and pulled piping.

Please drop me a line if you have any additional feedback on this.

(damian.willcox (at) autodesk.com)

thanks,

-damian

[patpat79]

Hi, good day. Hopefully I could help you out with some  little questions and insights, have been very busy with tight schedules of our project.

1. In using  Plant 3D Pipe bends, what is really the purpose of these, is this for Sweep bends? 3D elbows? Tube bends ? ect.

-For sweep bends and 3D / 5D bends, we use/ created custom elbow for that so that we will not have any problem with the descriptions, lengths details etc.

- For tubing works, actually we doesnt have much of this as the moment, and as per the current Plant 3D setup, for me, it is not yet ready for general tubing project with its default setup as of now, we have customized, compromised and created work around for our tubing Iso and BOM there have produced desired output at the end of our project.

2. Is the 180 deg. Bend is the Default 180 deg. Return fitting of Plant 3D you have used? If so, as to your case, you are saying that the default Return fitting in the catalog is wrong?

-As for our projects, havent encountered problem with Return fittings yet, maybe because of the component is not frequently used therefore is not checked that much, I'll see about that but as per our experience, we doesnt have any issue

- The only way to solve catalog and component problems are to create a component/spec library like we have (as per vendor and company standard compliant) so that everything that you will be using is 100% at ease were correct.

Good for us we dont use the Pipe Bend feature as of the moment. (have only used that for some piping work around method) thanks, I hope some of our good colleagues here could help you out ... ^_^

[rollzbaby82345]

Hope this help, you need to set your end connection to PL not BV to removed the weld connectors and count that set as one pipe type.

[iain.stewartCDU9L]

Hi,

Can you explain this further please?

thanks

Iain