Design And Development On3D Pipeline Layout Software

The pipeline is the industrial nerve. From chemical engineering pipeline to heating and gas pipeline, from underground pipeline to oil pipeline, it can be seen in every corners of the industrial areas. This paper studies3D piping design system and develops a3D piping layout software, which able to arrange pipelines in3D environment and generate pipe entities.The3D piping layout software developed in this paper employs the JhSolid3D modeling software as the basic framework and the HOOPS3D Framework as the graphical display and render engine.The software is designed by the method of object-oriented technology and employs the Parasolid kernel functions to construct solid entities. The main purpose of this paper is to develop a3D piping layout software that is easy to use and can meet engineering designer’s needs.The layout of the pipelines in3D environment is the core of this software.The software provides two methods to accomplish pipeline layout. First, pipeline can be arranged manually by clicking mouse and keyboard input. This method can deal with a large number of pipelines, and provides great flexibility for user. Second, the software also provides a method that automatically construct pipeline to further improve the layout efficiency,this function includes cross-connect, the shortest distance-connect and parallel to axes. This method is efficient when the connecting case is simple.In order to control the three dimensional direction on the screen, this paper designs a method that three directional arrows are placed at the starting point of drawing, and the user can change the drawing direction by clicking on the corresponding directional arrow. The modification functions of this software are as follows:modifying the coordinates of the node, modifying the bend radius of the pipeline, inserting a new node in the pipeline, bypassing the pipeline which has the interference problem and modifying the parameters of the pipe entity. Pipeline entities in this system are constructed by the sweep modeling function provided by Parasolid, and rendered by HOOPS visualization components. The software system employs the selecting method provided by the HOOPS to pick up the pipe entities, pipeline, pipeline nodes and other geometric elements.After programming, debugging, and repeatedly testing it is confirmed that the software can successfully achieved the above-mentioned functions. The correctness of above methods have been verified.