Tube and Pipe - Populate Derived Route with fittings

[stoyan_ivanov]

Hello,

I am writing because my team have difficulties with populating tube and pipe routes with fittings.

In first phase of the project our team have routed the pipelines with 3D sketch and sweep. Like this we were able to make Clash Detection in Navis, show the progress to the client and prepare for later stage of the project.

In current stage of the project we would like to create pipeline drawings with specifications. We thought we would delete the sweep and use "Derived route" on the already traced 3D sketches.

This works well and we are happy with the result.

The problem comes when we start to put fittings. When we try to place fitting into derived route we get the following message - "Can't insert fitting into a derived route".

Then we started searching for a solution and after reading carefully the help menu we tried placing the fittings with "Connect Fittings" -> "Insert Fitting", choosing the element as a "Free fitting".

This works quite well if you need to connect continuously fittings. They snap to each others connection point and all works well:

However, if we need to displace the fitting we need to use "Edit connection" on the fitting and to choose "User-defined" and to type the displacement value:

The distance we have moved the fitting, however is not populated with pipe and stays empty.

All this have made us to give up on "Derived route" and use Route option + Grounded Points to create the route:

When created like this, we can enter fitting in the created pipelines, which splits the automatically created pipe into two separate pipes:

Routing like this is OK if we don't touch the main 3D sketch.

If we change the route of pipeline (3D sketch) created with "Derived route" all is done dynamically and the route is recreated without errors.

If we change the route (3D sketch) of a pipeline created with "Route"+"Grounded Point" the route is not dynamically changed and sometimes it breaks and needs to be recreated/redrawn from scratch.

My question is why is this limitation: "Can't insert a fitting into a derived route."?

Is this intended? Can this be changed in a patch or future release of the product?

Is there a way to automatically populate with pipe the gap that comes from displacing a fitting with "Insert fitting" and "User-defined" value or is there another workflow for placing the fittings into a derived route?

[CGBenner]

@stoyan_ivanov 

Hello!  I've looked at your assembly, but I cannot get the structure to resolve.  Did you use Pack & Go to zip these files up?  

[stoyan_ivanov]

Hi! I have reuploaded the zip file.
Line 654.0050.PP.0001.A24 test is done with route and grounded points.
Line 654.0050.PP.0002.B24 test is done with derived route.

[Yijiang.Cai · Accepted solution]

@stoyan_ivanov Now it is a limitation to place fitting on the derived route, but we can use alternative solution to get it done in your case. Please see the attached image. You can create the work points within the 3D sketch environment based on the intersection point of two lines. When creating the route, you can include geometry of work points in part 3d sketch, and route based on the included work point geometry. Please also convert auto-route to sketch, and the route will be updated with the changes on 3d sketch in the part. Thank you!

[stoyan_ivanov]

Thank you very much for the proposed alternative solution! I've tried it and it works! I will share it with my team.
I still think Autodesk need to allow us to place fittings into a derived route and I hope we will see it in future releases.