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Tube and pipe; smarter placing of fittings?

6 REPLIES 6
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Message 1 of 7
thijs1234
520 Views, 6 Replies

Tube and pipe; smarter placing of fittings?

Hello,

After I've done a lot to get tube and pipe working in our company (thanks for the help) i've got some questions now on the drawing itself.

 

1. On the picture Subassembly you see a black valve with some fittings connected to it (4 different parts total) I need this "subassembly" in all 11 runs, you see a few of them on the Runs picture (a few of them are patterned). How can I do this easily? It is not an option to shrinkwrap this into one part because everything is bought seperately.

 

2. The flowmeters you see on the Runs picture are placed in each of the runs seperately. Is there a way to set them all at the same height at once instead of edditting all different routes?

 

3. On the picture bushing to 20mm you see a elbow with a piece of 25mm pipe to a motorvalve. This is wrong, the motorvalve needs 20mm pipe. Now I want to insert a bushing into the elbow so i can make the last piece of pipe 20mm. How is this done? I know that I can disconnect the pipe connections when I do this to a Tee for example. But I can't delete the pipe connection of the elbow.

 

Thanks!

Thijs

6 REPLIES 6
Message 2 of 7
cbenner
in reply to: thijs1234


@thijs1234 wrote:

Hello,

After I've done a lot to get tube and pipe working in our company (thanks for the help) i've got some questions now on the drawing itself.

 

1. On the picture Subassembly you see a black valve with some fittings connected to it (4 different parts total) I need this "subassembly" in all 11 runs, you see a few of them on the Runs picture (a few of them are patterned). How can I do this easily? It is not an option to shrinkwrap this into one part because everything is bought seperately.

 

You could make a derived part out of this subassembly, and then author that and add it to your Content Center so that is behaves as a single fitting.

 

2. The flowmeters you see on the Runs picture are placed in each of the runs seperately. Is there a way to set them all at the same height at once instead of edditting all different routes?

 

I'm not aware of any way to do these all at one time, unless there is an ilogic solution.  (I want to learn some of this so bad, I just don't have time right now). 

 

3. On the picture bushing to 20mm you see a elbow with a piece of 25mm pipe to a motorvalve. This is wrong, the motorvalve needs 20mm pipe. Now I want to insert a bushing into the elbow so i can make the last piece of pipe 20mm. How is this done? I know that I can disconnect the pipe connections when I do this to a Tee for example. But I can't delete the pipe connection of the elbow.

 

What I generally do in these situations, is place the bushing and the do a "Change Size" on the segment of pipe that comes after it.  Downside to this is that if you make changes later that pipe will revert back to the size set in the route.... you just have to remember this.  I've also, on rare occasions, deleted that leg of the route (yes, you lose the elbow).  you can then place an elbow at the end manually... accounting for the center to face dimension, and then place your bushing.... and then start a new route from the bushing at the new size.  Either way would work, to me it depends on how much of the route is after the size change.  If it's a lot and has more bends in it... I'll go with the second option.

 

Thanks!

Thijs


Inserted suggestions into the text above....

 

Hope it helps!

Message 3 of 7
thijs1234
in reply to: cbenner

@Q1: This would make our bill of materials pretty useless..? In this assembly then approximately 50 - 80 fittings aren't on the BOM. Aren't there other ways that can make work a lot easier? Connecting each stack over and over again 11 times (and then we've got another valve) is just the constraint after constraint that we wanted to avoid using Routed systems.

 

@Q2: Too bad.. it would have helped out a lot if the parameters were valid for all runs in the tube and pipe instead of one seperate for each run.

 

@Q3: Thanks, this will do. Too bad it's another shortcoming of the T&P environment that there isn't a solution that's handles changes in design better.

 

Message 4 of 7
cbenner
in reply to: thijs1234

Q1...

 

Just a thought, but sometimes we build pipelines that are not interconnected as a separate subassembly, using T&P... and then Constraint assemble them to the larger assembly.  If you built this subassembly that way, you cold insert it into the larger assembly as many times as needed.  Make the top level of that sub-assembly a "Phantom" BOM part, and all of the components should show up in the BOM with the correct quantities.

 

Exaple:  We make dilution systems,... I build the water line as a standalone assembly using tube & pipe connections, then simply insert as needed into the top level piping assembly.

 

This or something like it might work for your situation.  i agree it would be a huge pain to have to route the same thing over and over and over....

 

Message 5 of 7
thijs1234
in reply to: cbenner

hmm sorry but I think I don't understand it completely yet.

You mean that I make a whole new subassembly with tube and pipe of let's say, the flowmeter and the valve with the 4 fittings, place this complete subassembly as many times in the top level assembly as needed with normal constraints and connect my runs to these subassemblies? I guess it is not recommended to constrain anything to the runs themselves? Tried this a few times but it didn't seem like the way to go.

 

Which part do I need to make phantom then and why?

 

 

By the way another strange thing happened to me, the routed systems book told me you could copy runs by just dragging them another time in your assembly, this works fine in the tutorial file but for the most of my runs it doesn't. Is there a reason why I can't copy some runs?  (not all, I can copy a few)

 

Message 6 of 7
cbenner
in reply to: thijs1234

In this image:

 

test.JPG

 

I made the fittings you see as a separate pipe run.  I then placed that run inside of an existing run and used regular constraints on this end of it.  I can route as normal to the other end.  The new Run shows up in this run's BOM as an assembly with a single part number.... but if you click on the BOM status next to this assembly:

 

run.JPG

 

.... and set that to Phantom, then the components will show up instead, adding themselves to the BOM of the run you placed it in.

 

I've played around with this for a while, and this is all I've been able to come up with today I'm afraid.  I'm not certain why some of your runs won't copy, but if I have some time in the morning I'll take a look at it.  Would it be possible to send me a small data set that exhibits this behavior?

Message 7 of 7
thijs1234
in reply to: cbenner

Thanks for the clarification! I will definitely try this when I'm at work friday.

 

I will then also see if it is posible to send you a small assembly where the problem with copying occurs.

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