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ENGINEERING
A U TO M AT I O N
OCTOBER 2003 REPORT www.eareport.com
Reprinted from
Engineering
Automation
SmartPlant 3D: Changing the Future of
Report
October 2003 Engineering
Volume 12
By David Cohn
Issue 10
©2003
A
Cyon Research fter spacecraft and airplanes, September 2000 issue. At that time, we
Corporation processing plants, offshore noted that the company was a strong
drilling rigs, and large ships are proponent of the concept that today ’s
among the most complex of engineer- technology needs to be utilized through-
ing projects, demanding the skills of out the entire lifecycle of power and
numerous engineering disciplines. process plants. “No longer is it simply a
Those involved often span a natural matter of how quickly a designer can put
bridge between the AEC and lines and circles on a sheet of paper. The
MCAD worlds. Intergraph’s key element is managing information
I N S I D E Process, Power & Offshore and the relationships that are dependent
T H I S I S S U E division (formerly known as upon this information.”
the Process & Building In recognition of this, and also
Solutions division) has been addressing the fact that much of its soft-
S P E C I A L the leading software provider ware was based on technologies and
R E P R I N T in this realm for a quarter of a methods that had been around for more
centur y. The company ’s than two decades, the Process, Power &
featuring SmartPlant family of products Offshore division began a seven year
provides the tools for produc- research and development initiative to
Intergraph Process, ing schematic designs, piping turn its vision into a product offering a
Power & Offshore and instrumentation dia- data-centric, rule-driven solution for
Madison, AL grams (P&IDs), and the other streamlining engineering design
drawings and engineering processes while preserving existing data
data needed to build these and making it more usable and more re-
complex facilities. Its Plant usable. The fruits of these labors is
Design System (PDS) is a comprehen- SmartPlant 3D.
sive production-focused design and While existing tools focus on
engineering application for plant design, achieving design and have reduced
construction, and operations. And fieldwork, SmartPlant 3D focuses on
Intergraph’s SmartPlant Foundation soft- reducing project schedules and achiev-
ware provides the means for sharing and ing design productivity. SmartPlant 3D
re-using plant information throughout represents a brand-new technology, pro-
the plant lifecycle. viding what Intergraph sees as a signifi-
Engineering Automation Report last cantly better way to design a plant. The
looked at this Intergraph division in the new product was announced earlier this
E N G I N E E R I N G A U T O M A T I O N R E P O R T
route a pipe, he can also route HVAC or cable- If a change results in more than one solution,
ways. Because these tasks are performed in the designer is notified and can accept the pre-
similar ways across applications, the tools allow ferred action—similar to the way one would select
users to design across multiple disciplines. the correct word when spell-checking a Word doc-
ument. If a decision cannot or is not immediately
Leveraging data-centric technology made, SmartPlant 3D maintains a “to-do” list,
In the past, a design was either divided into ensuring that others are alerted to changes in the
individual files or portions of a project were model requiring their attention. This eliminates
checked-out to individual designers. While a the need for manual checking later.
designer was working in one of these areas, no SmartPlant 3D can import data, such as
other designer could work on that data. When files P&IDs, from other applications and establish cor-
were checked back in, changes then had to be relations between this data and the SmartPlant 3D
coordinated with other disciplines. model. The system can then also detect changes
One of the key defining features of in this data, enabling the designer to do an
SmartPlant 3D is the fact that it is built on top of a on-screen graphical check between the
view. Designers then have the option of accepting SmartPlant 3D can also produce drawings in
or resolving interferences as they occur while Web-viewable formats as well as in common CAD
working with the involved discipline engineers to formats. Data reports can also be easily created
solve the problem, or waiting until related design and output into Excel spreadsheets.
tasks are complete.
Fo r ex a m p l e , i f a p i p e l i n e p e n e t r a t e s a Data reuse
slab, SmartPlant 3D immediately displays a red Knowledge capture and reuse has been a
block indicating a clash. To eliminate the inter- major theme in MCAD. But being able to reuse
ference, the designer can use a simple sketch data is equally important in plant design. Plants
tool to place a circular cutout around the are subject to stringent regulator y requirements
pipeline, creating a hole in the slab. Since this and require detailed as-built records. At the
eliminates the clash, the ser ver automatically same time, plants are subject to numerous
removes the clash indicator. design modifications during their operation.
SmartPlant 3D retains the as-built version while
Automating drawing generation enabling engineers to evaluate future changes,
Intergraph Process, Power & Offshore
SmartPlant 3D is also the first plant while working with the same single database.
design application to provide automated In addition to its tools for designing equip-
generation of piping isometric and scaled ment, piping, HVAC, raceway, civil, and str uc-
orthographic drawings, and associated tural components typical in most plant design
reports, dramatically reducing production applications, SmartPlant 3D incorporates fea-
time. Rules can be established for each type tures for electrical cabling, pipe supports, and
of drawing, including scale, drawing border construction planning that are usually pur-
and background sheet, font styles, and so on. chased as third-party products. SmartPlant 3D
After spending a small amount of time setting also offers specialized functions for offshore
up these rules, drawings can be created as facility and topsides of floating production,
easily as reports produced from a database. storage and offloading design. Capabilities
As in a report, each drawing has an associ- include penetration management, weight and
ated query or filter template that determines center-of-gravity management, reinforced plate
the objects or area to show. This template connection design, str uctural manufacturing,
runs each time the drawing is updated. The and shop floor integration.
system then processes the data and creates the
drawing using whatever symbology has been Integration and migration
defined. Although it offers many of the same capabili-
SmartPlant 3D drawings are designed to be ties as PDS, SmartPlant 3D is very much different.
as complete as possible, requiring little or no user For the user, the major differences are the user
involvement and eliminating the need for manual interface, consistency across disciplines and tasks,
editing. Once a drawing and its quer y are estab- and the ability to establish object relationships.
lished, anyone can generate the drawing, eliminat- SmartPlant 3D also reduces system administration
ing the need to have CAD experts involved in tasks because there are only three components to
drawing production. And because the drawings consider:
can be easily generated, there is little need to save • the operating system components (including
actual drawing files for transmittal. Instead, a Microsoft Windows user groups)
message with a path to the drawing can be sent to • the database (Microsoft SQL Server)
other design centers where the query to produce • the application itself
the drawing can be run. In its initial release, SmartPlant 3D requires
When a drawing is produced, it is time and that Microsoft SQL Ser ver be installed on each
date stamped so that it can be kept in correlation server hosting the SmartPlant 3D database. In the
with the actual plant objects contained in the 3D future, Intergraph also plans to support Oracle.
model. Any changes to the model trigger a notifica- SmartPlant 3D can leverage existing PDS
tion that the drawing needs to be updated. All revi- data by referencing the PDS model, and
sions to the drawing are stored in the SmartPlant SmartPlant 3D’s automated drawing capability
3D database for revision-tracking purposes. can be used to generate drawings for PDS
A simple, easy-to-use Microsoft Windows interface boosts productivity and reduces the learning curve. SmartPlant 3D provides a single
software tool for use by all of the engineering disciplines involved in plant design, construction, and management.
For subscription
and back issues The full commercial release of users to take a fresh look at their project work
information, call:
360-733-0711 SmartPlant 3D will offer free upgrades to the processes and to use SmartPlant 3D in more
Engineering
EAP participants, and the user price for new powerful ways than those possible with their
Automation Report licenses will increase approximately 20%. current plant design systems. Intergraph’s
711 Chuckanut Drive N. This will put the price of SmartPlant 3D in the expertise in the plant design business and
Bellingham, WA
same price categor y as PDS and its compet- their intimate knowledge of the new software
98229-6921
+1-360-733-0711 ing systems. Intergraph also plans to offer puts the company in a unique position to
fax 360-733-2964 additional modules that can be added to partner with their clients.
www.eareport.com SmartPlant 3D to further increase its value, In our September 2000 article, we con-
Cyon Research and the company will offer lease options as cluded that what Intergraph needed to do
Corporation
8220 Stone Trail Drive
well. was not just reduce the cost of designing
Bethesda, MD The new software should also provide plants but also help reduce the costs of oper-
20817-4556 USA Intergraph with many new consulting oppor- ating those plants over their lifecycle.
www.cyonresearch.com tunities. The ability to refine and redefine SmartPlant 3D is poised to help accomplish
workflows using SmartPlant 3D will enable that goal. Q
Contact:
6 Intergraph Process, Power & Offshore 1-800-260-0246 (United States)
OCTOBER, 2003
300 Intergraph Way 1-256-730-3707 (International)
Madison, AL 35758 ppo.intergraph.com