Are O-lets supplied in 3D Plant? How about pipe bends?

[Anonymous]

Our company is looking at options to replace our LISP-based 3D piping program with something more sophisticated.  Our Autodesk sales guy is clueless about piping though. Any remotely technical question about what parts are available in Plant 3D gets us an "I would guess it's in there" answer, which is no answer.   We manufacture systems with piping, reservoirs, pressure vessels, support structures, enclosures, interconnecting tubing, gauge panels; the whole deal.  We need a package that can help us do as much of that stuff as possible. So I come to the experts to get some answers.

Are weldolets, elbolets, threadolets, sockolets, nippolets, etc. in the program?  Threaded and socket weld fittings? Do you have the option to show flange bolt holes in case you neet to rotate flanges to a specific angle?  Can you incorporate bent pipe or tubing into the routings?  Is it easy to build fitting-to-fitting spools, or does the program demand you insert pipe between fittings?  How difficult is it really to create your own custom parts to drop into a pipe?  Do spools get flakey if you make changes to the piping?  How well does the structural design part of the program work?  Is it easy to create 2D spool and detail drawings?  How about extracting bills of materials? Can a BOM be fed into an MRP system?

Our sales guy is pushing us to adopt Inventor Routed Systems. He put on a decent enough dog & pony show, but piping parts are seriously lacking.  His response is  "It's simple to make your own parts." It may be "simple", but if you have to make nearly all the thousands of parts you need it gets pretty time consuming.  Plus the learning curve going from AutoCAD to Inventor.  That's why I'd lean towards 3D Plant if it can do what we need and has the majority of the fittings already there.

Thanks in advance for any feedback you can give.

Mike

[Anonymous]

Most olets are in the software, but not elbolets for some strange reason.  The catalogues are decent enough with butt, socket and threaded fittings.  More exotic fittings are not that well supported yet.  You can't show bolt holes, common with most sortware of this type.  No ability to do tube bent pipe, unless it's well hidden!  Fitting to fitting spools are no problem.  Custom parts are quite easy, so no problem there.

The strutural part is waste of time, it's just there to tick the box.  You'd be better of modelling structures just in solids.  The iso side works well, just like any other product with isogen.  Not so good for producing 3d views of piping etc though.  The bom side is very good and extracts to excel with ease.

If you need isos and most of your systems are quite different, Plant3d is decent enough.  If there is no need for isos and your systems have scope to utilise Inventors parametrics and you make a large number of the parts in the system in-house, then I'd say that's the way to go.

[Anonymous]

I really appreciate the input David.

I figured the boltholes were a no-go. Way back when I was on the beta for 3D Plant (but had little time to stay with it) I asked about showing boltholes. The response was "Why would you need to show them?"  The possibility of having to rotate flanges so a valve actuator or handwheel cleared an obstruction never entered their heads.  Elbolets take a good bit of calculating to locate them on the outside curve of an elbow. Easier to just ignore them 😉  Bent pipe could be shown using one of my LISP routines but it wouldn't make it into the BOM. And we almost never do single line iso's.  It sounds like there may not be enough advantages to make the switch from our current system to 3D Plant worthwhile.  Too bad, I was very hopeful.

It seems like these later entries into 3D Piping (Solidworks & Inventor routed systems, 3D Plant) were designed with precious little input from industrial piping designers in the earliest stages, considering the number of commonplace piping features/parts missing from the programs.  One of my coworkers says industrial piping designers are the illegitimate children of the engineering world; generally ignored and forgotten.

I guess I'll have to quiz the Inventor Routed Systems folks next...

Thanks again,

Mike

[jenakap1]

@Mike -

We would certainly welcome the opportunity to talk to you and your company is looking for in Plant 3D.  We cannot disclose specific features that we are working on for future releases but we definitely want to hear from you and other potential customers. 

Please email pat dot j at autodesk.com and I will work with you in getting your questions answered as well as putting you in touch with sales people familiar with Plant design workflows. 

[Anonymous]

Mike,

If you do not produce iso's as an output I would say Plant3d isn't going to be the right product for you.  Things like bolt holes are delt with, but only though the iso where the valve spindle is shown to orientate the bolt holes.  By not using the isogen outputs, you loose a lot of the reason for plant3d to exist.  If we didn't require iso's, we would just use Inventor or Autocad and be done with it, dispite it not being the perfect tool.

Pipied systems are not really ignored, we are well supported at high level with things like PDMS, Autoplant, Plant3d, it's just the guys who do intergration of skid/system packages fall between the dedicated piping, steelwork and machinary worlds.  There is a strong argument just to use standard Autocad still for this kind of work.  If your producing, say, 5 skids of a single design or with minor changes there is more of a case for Inventor, but if each is bespoke and there isn't much design you can recycle each time standard Autocad wins.

[Anonymous]

I think you're right David.  I can't see us making a sizable investment in switching to an AutoCAD vertical that is only going to do half of what we need.

Now I hadn't meant pipers are completely ignored, but compared to mechanical design programs with every conceivable piece of hardware the piping programs are typically short-changed.  When a program is specifically marketed to do industrial piping, then has maybe 20% of the parts commonly used in the industry I have to wonder what the programmers were thinking.  And I don't mean just Autodesk, but almost all of the systems I've looked at.  My coworkers tease me because my first question of a sales person is always "Does it have elbolets?" The typical response is "What's an elbolet?" After I explain what elbolets are they say "I don't think so, but it would be really easy to add them to the parts library!"  Gee, thanks. An issue for us too is probably 40% of our work is with steel (tanks, enclosures, platforms, etc.) and 60% pipe & control systems.  We really would like to find something that handles both well. Nothing is going to be perfect out of the box, but we need the best fit we can find.  Wish me luck   For the time being we'll just keep using our LISP routines.

I appreciate the insights you've provided David. It helps a lot to get an opinion from someone who's using the software.

Mike

[dgorsman]

Inventor Routed Systems rocks for compressor skids or other applications which are mostly mechanical with a little piping going from point to point.  Kind of annoying trying to deal with the models downstream though, since the level of detail produces horrendously large AutoCAD models.

I've never seen bolt holes in a piping design program.  We've never provided that level of detail on any production drawing, aside from the orientation of the valve stem if not horizontal or vertical.  Its the fabricators job to make sure the flange bolt holes are oriented according to the clients standards.  One less source of error, and one less thing the designers have to put onto nearly every drawing.

I find most piping programs provide the majority of components OOTB.  Maybe not in all wall thickness (e.g. STD, XS, XXS, but not 80, 40, 160) , but the external dimensions are identical so its something of a non-issue (clone and modify wall values, or just use the provided data files with a different description).  Where they usually fall down is in steel design.  Its brutally simplistic compared to conventional building design and doesn't require near the level of detail or fancy-dancy options but the structural component of piping programs usually require using a high-end steel program.  We really need a "Simple Steel" software - shapes plus some basic coping, joining, and detailing tools.  The big problem is the difference in the way piping and structural steel are modeled.

[Anonymous]

The steel design is a huge weak point in Plant3d.  It is just too limited to be of any use and solids do a better job.  The only downside of that is loosing the BOM.  Really that is what they should be putting into the package, rather than a pretend steelwork program.

Other than that I like where Plant3D is going, the database side is very robust and they have done some good work on the pipe routing interface, but they are still a couple of releases away from being a match for the other Autocad piping packages.

[Anonymous]

If by components you mean pipe materials and wall thicknesses, then Plant 3D probably has that fairly well covered. What I wonder about are things like SAE flanges, lap joint flanges, o-lets, male x female threaded unions, nipolets, half-couplings, RTJ flanges, orifice flanges, socket weld reducing inserts, reducing couplings, FRP fittings, etc. These are items we use pretty frequently, which should be in the box for a piping program aimed at industrial piping designers. Equipment is too varied to be able to cover it in any real way, but "parts is parts", and most are made to industry standard dimensions, so having them ready to go shouldn't be an ordeal.  The software supplier can create the parts once and supply them to tens of thousands of users, or tens of thousands of users can duplicate the effort to make the parts that should have been there to start with.  I know which I'd prefer to see.

[Anonymous]

I have to agree with dgorsman, I've used AutoPLANT, Cadworx and Plant 3D and none show bolt holes. Which software have you used that is a piping design software that shows that level of detail?

As far as the structural "module" goes in Plant 3D, Autodesk states that it isn't intended to be a true structural design package, more of a place holder. I find it easy to use and a nice alternative to drawing solids, especially for a company that is going from a 2D house to a 3D house and doesn't have any 3D structural block library created. Autodesk does have a steel package, Revit Structure, Robot for analysis and Structural Detailer. This is no different than using Pro Steel for AutoPLANT.

I would agree the content is a bit lacking and I feel poorly organized. I have to give a thumbs up to Bentley for their plant content. Having it organized by manufacturer is a HUGE help in an industry that is manufacturer driven. It would be nice to see the plant catalogs start moving towards that than just creating catalogs based on a standard and allowing more ease in creating and customizing the more non-standard components such as grooved pipe or mechanical joint components.

As for the competition with other plant design software, I see it's main competitors being Cadworx and AutoPLANT primarily, and in all honesty, with only a few features lacking;

1. Reporting, I really cannot consider exporting to excel a raw data sheet real reporting. Engineering firms need to be able to export customized reports that can actually be handed to someone with little to no customization after exporting, no touch isos...how about no touch reports?

2. Isogen, just because it works for the most part, doesn't mean it shouldn't be improved upon. Isogen in Bentley was a enough of a pain to customize with the Isogen editors and having all the Isogen documentation, Plant 3D doesn't provide the editors nor the documentation. Some documents can be acquired from the web, but the editors are a different story. This just adds to the headache. Seeing some kind of improvement to Isogen, or better yet, something more integrated with point and click and less notepad editing would be nice.

3. Stress Analysis, yes you can export pcf files and import them into AutoPIPE or Caesar II....but, I've been told that importing them into AutoPIPE doesn't work because weights aren't assigned in AutoPIPE, something else that is lacking in the catalogs, and I haven't heard any confirmations about it working with Caesar II. This would, could and in some cases is a show stopper for a piping design firm, where I worked before, ALL piping was run through analysis by engineers before being approved for construction.

Overall, I have seen a few companies drop Cadworx and/or AutoPLANT to go with Plant 3D because of the ease of customization, better spec creation and customization, and over all maintenance of the software. Plant has markets it does fit into, maybe not big boy Oil & Gas at the moment, but it will get there, and kudos to Autodesk for improving their product based on user feedback!

[Anonymous]

Man, people sure get fixated on the flange bolt hole issue...

OK, I've seen them in 3 parametric design programs with pipe routing capability: Solidworks, UG, and Inventor.  I did a little work with AutoPlant, but that was 14 years ago and I can't remember how detailed parts were. That's about it for my personal experience.  A lack of flange bolt holes would not be a deal-breaker, but an option to show them when creating fab drawings would be nice. My opinion and I'm sticking to it.

Because the guys doing the fabrication of the systems we design and build are about 30 yards behind me in the next building I can't take an "it's their responsibility" attitude; they won't allow it.  I'm OK with that, my job is to take care of the fabricators and give them whatever level of detail they need to get their work done.  They're the ones that generate the profit for the company.

We've been hoping to find a system that makes the engineering end of things easier and quicker.   I'm not sure there's anything on the market that is a particularly good fit for us, so I'm trying to determine which system would give us the fewest headaches and the greatest ROI. 

I appreciate the input from everyone.  Keep it coming!

Mike

[dgorsman]

That makes sense - those three programs aren't piping design programs per se, they're mechanical design software and that level of detail is important for things like analysis and simulation.  From a piping design standpoint its always been a non-issue for us, the same way things like thread guage and lubricant.  Making the engineering side easier usually involves downloading things to those who are best equipped to deal with them and away from those it doesn't affect.

The shop guys usually appreciate when such small details are left up to them since what is specified isn't always the most convenient or even possible (checkers do slip up from time to time).  Most don't like the micro-management aspect it entails either.  In all my years of piping design its always been the fabricators responsibility to know what the bolt alignments for a particular industry or client standard are.  I imagine thats a little difficult to get away with if they are across the parking lot and you are producing both the design and fabrication documents.

Rather than actually modeling the bolts/holes individually and requiring some sort of end projection for a detail, it would probably be better to attach some sort of index code, rotational value, or even a reference to a standard detail drawing.  Either way a little data in each component is a lot easier to work with than a bunch of 3D objects when working on a large plant.

[Anonymous]

Showing flange bolt holes would actually be more for the designers benefit than the fabricators, in the instances where we'd want to show them. The fab guys know the standard is bolt holes straddle the vertical and horizontal centerlines. Some of the piping systems we make are so jam-packed together (by the customers requirements) that we have to do things like rotate a valve actuator 90 degrees then rotate the valve 17 degrees off vertical to provide enough clearance to fit it in the line. Having the boltholes as a visible reminder helps the guy detailing the spool to call out the flange rotation. These sorts of situations happen to us pretty frequently, especially when our customers specify more and/or bigger pieces of equipment be shoe-horned into the same space. And I mean shoe-horned; sometimes only an inch clear between components.

7 years ago we had tried to use Solidworks to do our 3D piping design. I'd never seen a more unstable program before or since.  We struggled for two years trying to make it work with no success.  We went back to AutoCAD and 2D, then started using AutoCAD 3D for design, and it's worked pretty well.  Now our chief engineer is pushing for Inventor Routed Systems.  I'm worried we would see history repeat itself.  Not the stability issues so much, but the steep learning curve and amount of library creation work, all while we're up to our ears in projects.  I'm trying to find time to work with a trial copy, but it's dang hard with my workload right now,

In the end a committee will probably be formed, without any of the designers on it, which will come to a decision and select the next 3D design program we'll be using.  That is, if history repeats itself...

[dgorsman]

If you are designing skid packages (including all sorts of non-piping items), yeah - you definitely should be interested in Inventor.  All those extra mechanical design and analysis tools will pay for themselves.  If you are building more conventional piping systems, even modular racks, then I think you will see a repeat of your previous experience.

[Anonymous]

dgorsman is right. Inventor is not a good option for designing something larger than a skid. I have worked with 2 clients that have tried using it for piping beyond a skid and they have had incredible headaches.

[Anonymous]

lol....ive created complete process plants in Inventor...its not the software, its the user. (You can dump pcf files from routed systems that you could then feed into your pipe stress packages or Isogen)

Inventor is most definately the best program for creating this type of model and associated documentation. Im assuming that the P&ID's are pretty straight forward for the skids and that the requirment for ISO's is almost non existent...Plant only comes into its own when working on large and complex P&ID's and you require ISO's for your piping designs.