The Big Picture 3D Modeling: Good Visualization Tools Make Planning and Customer Liaison Much Easier

3D modeling is now a standard feature of the design process for complex buildings and production systems. Special visualization tools provide even greater transparency and give you the “big picture”. In addition to simplifying the planning process, they can also make things go a lot smoother on site. Last but not least, they are also an invaluable plant training aid.

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If you have children (or like to play yourself), you know that the graphics on today’s computer games are very realistic. Visualization tools which are used in industry have borrowed some of the algorithms which were developed by the game industry. Read on to find out more about three companies which supply visualization tools.

NavisWorks: real time inspection tour

The plant engineer is taking a tour of the plant with a serious expression on his face. He follows the pipelines meter by meter, checks the positioning of the equipment and constantly looks for design faults or other problems. Even though he has to pay close attention to what he is doing, he can still afford to be relaxed, because the system he is checking has not even been built yet. At this point, it only exists as a virtual model, which can be evaluated as if it were a real plant thanks to visualization software from NavisWorks. Gerd Bergner is an engineer at Lenzing Technik. The parent company, Lenzing AG, produces cellulose fiber. Bergner made the following observations about the software: “NavisWorks made our work a lot simpler, because plans for structural steel work and product systems can be merged into a complete model. We can view the plant from all sides and perspectives. The visualization software gives everyone involved a better feel for the whole project.” With the support of Axavia which specializes in data and configuration management, Lenzing has developed an IT strategy which supports all phases of production system planning. Accurate, detailed planning helps drive down construction costs. A reduction in problems during the implementation phase, more accurate planning and detection of as many problems at the planning stage make the entire project more cost effective. During plant design, NavisWorks offers the big advantage that the full set of CAD data can be imported for the visualization process and converted to the compressed NWD format. Compression makes it possible to easily manage the huge volume of data which has to be processed during plant design at acceptable speed on standard computers. NavisWorks can be used to combine data from different CAD systems to create a super model. It is also important to keep in mind that customers with little CAD experience can understand visualization images and recognize potential problems. Visualization images of very complex subsystems can be printed and used as installation instructions.

SmartPlant Review: interactive visualization

Intergraph describes its SmartPlant Review solution as a fully-featured visualization environment for interactive display of large, complex 3D models. The software developer claims that planners can perform in-depth analysis and verification of 3D models and navigate through the details of planning, design and maintenance data. The software offers high-performance shading and rendering, individual display adjustment, dynamic motion control with a mouse or joystick and other innovative functions. It is designed to enhance communications between customers, members of the project team and managers. SmartPlant Review offers a series of powerful modules which can be used to adapt the visualization capabilities to the particular project requirements. The list of features includes a design module, a model for simulation and visual effects and a photorealism module. SmartPlant Review can also be adapted to match hardware performance, and it always utilizes all of the available hardware.

SmartPlant Review offers the following advantages: an upfront look at the sequence of events during the design process, better design quality, early problem recognition based on a detailed review of the model during the design process and the opportunity to consider alternatives early on in the design process if potential problems are identified. Visualization also facilitates safety reviews.

Virtual Reality as an entry-level solution

The compressor manufacturer Neumann & Esser (NEA Group) has decided to introduce Auto-trol’s Process Plant Design (PPD) 3D CAD system worldwide. Visualization will be based on VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language). “This tool enables us to provide our customers with a very plausible model of the engineering solutions which we have developed using PPD,” explained Rüdiger Schaaf, CAD Team Coordinator at the NEA Group. A simple viewer is all that is needed to visualize the VRML files. PPD supports the designer from creation of the process engineering flow charts and the R&I plans which are based on the flow charts right through to 3D representation with the vector pipe module. The software does not physically store the symbols and 3D views. Instead it only stores database references. As a result, a large vector pipe model only requires about 50 MB rather than the usual 700–800 MB. The embedded converter also references customer-specific profiles during conversion of the vector pipe files to standard VRML format to ensure that colors or textures are always retained, for example. A freely available shareware player is used to visualize the files.

The designers use VRML during the entire engineering process. Several times a day, they convert the vector pipe models, which are constantly evolving, and they assess the quality of every cut-away. “Because they can move around the virtual pipelines on the screen, they can detect weakness or discrepancies earlier. Sections of the pipeline which have already been designed can be optimized, and this increases the quality of our engineering work,” said Schaaf. The new view of the system helps the project partners to avoid misunderstandings which can easily occur when different languages are involved. “We can use VRML files to show our customer what our proposed solution actually look like, and this makes the solutions much more plausible,” added Schaaf. Henning Lochner, key account manager at Auto-trol Germany, made the following comments: “We recommend to our customers that they use VRML for the design review of 3D models. Operation is intuitive and easy to learn, and there are no added software costs. These are compelling arguments. In the future, we will also support the XML-compliant X3D format which is the successor to VRML.”

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