Piping elbow using special angle

[Anonymous]

I am new to the piping environment.

I am trying to reproduce and ISOMETRIC pipe layout using Autodesk Inventor 2015.  I am wondering what would be the best way to do this since I have a BW 90 deg Elbow trime to 89.4 angle.    Is it possible to edit the rules that select the elbow so I can use a 90 deg angle?

[Mark.Lancaster]

@Anonymous

There's no 89.4 deg elbows in content center..  So for fixed piping routes you can only make 45 and 90deg turns.   There's an option for self-draining lines but those elbows I think are changing 8 to 12 deg.   You are talking about a .6 of degrees.   Is it really necessary to show .6 of deg elbow in your model?  Is this a long pipe run?   Don't worry about having your model create the ISO output (it doesn't work that well).

@cbenner  Anything to add?

[cbenner]

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@Mark.Lancaster wrote:

@Anonymous

There's no 89.4 deg elbows in content center..  So for fixed piping routes you can only make 45 and 90deg turns.   There's an option for self-draining lines but those elbows I think are changing 8 to 12 deg.   You are talking about a .6 of degrees.   Is it really necessary to show .6 of deg elbow in your model?  Is this a long pipe run?   Don't worry about having your model create the ISO output (it doesn't work that well).

@cbenner  Anything to add?

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Nope.... nothing.  I tried working with these way back when we were first getting started with Inventor T&P, but we really have no use for them so we didn't soend much time on it.  Sorry.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for this rapid answer.

The pipe lenght on this segment is 5217 mm and a slope of .6 deg for a elevation differenceof about 55 mm.

I never used Tube & Pipe environment and I am exploring it to see if we can use it as a tube & pipe software.  Since we already have Inventor Pro, I was looking at how it could be used.

My need is to be able to make ISO drawing as this one from contractual drawing.  Also, we need to make a 3D for clash detection.

Since we often see slope on horizontal piping, I was wondering if it IV2015 could manage it.

My other option is to make a special elbow with an adjsutable trim angle and publish it in the contente center.  What do you think ?

[Mark.Lancaster]

@Anonymous

A few things..

1.  You don't actually get piping ISO's from Inventor..  Inventor can only export the information then you need the piping ISO software to import that in.   In addition, piping ISOs from Inventor...  Well it's not worth doing them.

2.  You could create your own 89.4 deg elbows and publish them to content center and then define a piping style with the self draining option.  Then you would be able to pick your 89.4 deg elbow for the style.

3.  Start a pipe route.  Add the 89.4 deg elbow.  And then start another pipe run from the other side of the 89.4 deg elbow.

[Anonymous]

Could you explain what you meen by: "  piping ISOs from Inventor...  Well it's not worth doing them."

Do you mean that since we have a 3d MODEL, Isometric drawing are not useful so we should provide 3D isometric as example I found below ?

[Mark.Lancaster · Accepted solution]

In your original post and another reply of yours, you show what a "true" piping ISO drawing is like or per this example (below) from "Google Images"  That's how piping spools were done years ago when 3D wasn't around.  Some fabricators still prefer this type of drawing (meaning they still convert your 3D model images over to this convention) over see a 3D model of the piping spool.

Inventor can create an export of your piping information to a PCF file format (I think) which contains the pipe spool ISO info.  But like I said it will not actually create a true piping ISO drawing as shown above.  Are you looking to do that?  Is your requirements to actually create this line/arc type of drawing?  IF yes, then you need the software to read the PCF file or you will have to manually create it  yourself. 

In your latest reply you are showing a 3D/ISO view of your pipe run.  This is not considered a true piping ISO drawing.  So you need to make a determination of what type of drawing is needed for your piping spool.   My last job, we just did 3D/ISO views of piping spools.  If our fabricator wanted true Piping ISO drawings then they did it themselves.  Granted the cost may have be higher but why invest into the application if it truly doesn't work or we need additional software.

When it comes to doing a traditional PIPING ISO drawing (exporting it), the output from Inventor is not the greatest and thus my statement "not worth doing".

Hope that helps.

[Anonymous]

In response to your question: Are you looking to do that?  Is your requirements to actually create this line/arc type of drawing?

Actually, my client use Autocad and generate piping spool drawings using ISO standard.    They have to generate their BOM manually and it is a source of error and time consuming.  Also, they can't look if there is any clash.  They asked me to see if we could use another method instead.  So, the answer is no but we have to be prepared if they ask us to make ISO standard type drawings.

Thank you very much for your help.  It put me on tracks and help me see what I can you with IV.

[dgorsman]

Ah, my old friend ISOGEN...

Yeah, if this needs to be passed on to another fabricator you will want PCF files in addition to the drawings.  Those will be read into dedicated piping spool management software such as SPOOLGEN or ACORN, with the user referring to the drawing to ensure everything ends up correctly.

If everything is done internally ie. you are both engineer and fabricator, and you don't already use any kind of spool management program, then it won't matter much aside from convincing any powers-that-be that it will be effective.

[salariua]

Your drawing asks for a slope of 1/100 which is ~0.573... deg roughly, positive or negative of 90deg; this is quite common in Pharmaceutical gravity draining lines. 

ASME BPE clasifies this as

GSD2 - 1in/8ft - 10mm/1m - minimum slope 1% - minimum slope deg 0.57deg

I had that in a couple of projects and sadly Inventor can't be used for this. I have authored both my obtuse acute elbows to content center but unfortunately you can only use one with self draining lines.

Your whole run needs to slope in a single direction... which is not always the case. Some lines are so long that you need to have a maximum point somewhere in the middle rather than at one end. The Tube and Pipe Style window only allows you to select a single elbow be that obtuse or acute.

What I have ended up doing is running everything in tubing with bends, which allows custom angle routing.

This is Idea 102 on Tube and Pipe overhaul (to be posted when time permits)

102. Allow self draining lines with 2 slope directions. In the T&P style dialog when you tick the Self Draining box you are allowed to select a custom elbow which is either larger or smaller than 90deg. We should be allowed to choose the complement angle elbow as well. On long runs we tend to create a high point in the middle of the run and have them falling in both directions. For example on a self draining route from a pump to a storage vessel we create a high point in the middle and first section falls back to the pump while second falls towards the vessel.

Not sure how the next will help you but I'll throw it out there for anyone interested.

Tubing with bends has brought another set of problems because I needed insulated pipes in 1" and 2" wall thickness and sweep tube segments don't follow the pipe template but the pipe ID OD and sweep path get created automatically each time you change, modify the route.

I could have created a CC family where the OD of the pipe is the OD of the insulation but any branch fittings, clamps and instruments would stick to the outside face of the insulation rather than the pipe; another bug / limitation / improvement opportunity.

For this I decided to just add the insulation as a separate feature and while this works great in "Rigid Pipe with Fittings" (image bellow) it doesn't play well on "Tubing with Bends".

The sketch on sweep segment has no constraints, no dimensions and the OD ID circles are created based om T&P style dimensions (my guess) rather than part parameters.

If you change OD parameter in the part and you then modify the route (force update the sweep segment) the pipe segment doesn't change OD.

Check this out:

[Mark.Lancaster]

@Anonymous

Although this is not the exact replica of your ISOGEN drawing but I was able to create it in routed system and then document it in a drawing.

I will try to put together a video showing you the steps but its not really that bad to do in Inventor 2017.   For Inventor 2015 you may need to do some extra work to get the same results.

[Anonymous]

Nice!

Next week, I will get on it since my client accepted the format that I proposed (view of the actual 3D pipes).

I will post my result aftward.

Thank's again for your help, it is more than what I expected.

[Mark.Lancaster]

Only 2nd time making a Camtasia Video..  Sorry if its not smooth..    Let me know if you have any comments/questions about this tutorial

[salariua]

Hi Mark,

Can I ask why did you created the route as 3D sketch and derived it in Route part? This seems like a long procedure and I can't see the benefits of doing it this way.

It feel I would be spending more time doing it this way.

I will try and find some time to share how I've done this with tubing with bends and pipe with fittings but I am really swamped; it took me this long to read you previous post.

[Mark.Lancaster]

@salariua

Yeah there's probably other ways to do this..  I've been tinkering around with the 3D Sketch interface and derived route since Autodesk made significant changes to the 3D Sketch Environment in 2017.   Some stuff really looks promising if you could go to the next step.  (Hint Hint Autodesk)...  If it wasn't for the restriction where you can't place components on a derived route, laying out piping runs using 3D sketch interface/derived was so much faster than using the normal routing tools (in my opinion)..  

[salariua]

Must admit that I haven't tested the new 3D sketch tool but from all the videos it seems slower than 3D Ortho Tool in Tube & Pipe. 

I still don't get why Adesk haven't made this tool generally available outside T&P.