After a busy year of travelling and teaching courses in Holland, Kuwait and South Africa I have finally got down to writing.
This months’ tip rant.
3D CAD programs for plant design.
Ever since CAD programs appeared in the early 1980’s, management of engineering companies have been saying that 3D CAD will mean the demise of expensive piping designers as the programs will solve any and all of the piping layout and detail problems and route piping in a manner which is both efficient and cost effective.
This resulted in training programs, both in house and at the college level being watered down or shelved completely. Colleges produce CAD operators who, through no fault of their own, have a very basic understanding of what is involved in the piping discipline.
CAD programs will NOT route the piping efficiently when the operator is not familiar with all of the many ‘what if’ scenarios that must be considered. Computer programs cannot do Design Optimization, as I have said previously, if they did then we could stay in our beds in the morning and just press a button to design the plant. The computer will not make all required design decisions in a multi discipline environment. i.e. the common sense approach.
Subsequently, drawings are being issued for construction with incorrect or insufficient information to fabricate in the shop or field. Consideration is frequently not given to maintenance, process and safety procedures.
This will result in additional field construction costs and additional hours spent by maintenance personnel and operators once the plant is on stream.