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Piping Design Software Selection
2

Piping Design Software Selection

Piping Design Software Selection

(OP)
Good day all,
I am trying to make a selection for piping design software for my office. Any suggestions/reviews would be appriciated.

RE: Piping Design Software Selection

For the Autocad users preferred 3d piping design software from REBIS, name of application is Autoplant 3d.



Regards

Menashe

RE: Piping Design Software Selection

PDMS or PDS. I think PDMS is much better.

Actions speak louder than words

RE: Piping Design Software Selection

Hi!
I suggest you contact Carrier E20-II Refrigerant Piping Analysis Program if your subject is refrigeration piping.
Regards.
Cherian

RE: Piping Design Software Selection

(OP)
Thanks for the info all.
I work in an oil refinery so I design to 31.3
I have been condisering COADE CADWorx as opposed to Autoplant (Rebis) because of it's compatability with Cesar II. Any pros and cons of this software will be appriciated

Regards,
Jags

RE: Piping Design Software Selection

We looked at piping design software for our office. Rebis is becoming obsolete since they are no longer autodesk authorized. try Plant4D from CEA. A friend at BP recommended it. It links to Caesar and we found it to be more user friendly. Go to www.cea-int.com and ask for the info.
Good luck

RE: Piping Design Software Selection

If you are looking for netwrok analysis in the steady and unsteady state use AFT's Fathom & Impulse respectively.

Sharing knowledge is a way to immortality

RE: Piping Design Software Selection

Jagessar,
I have used Cad worx for two yrs. I think it is good enough. besides, it is cheapest software for piping and compatible with piping analyis software (caser II, same company products). I already suggest my new employor purching this one for us.

Good luk
clindu

RE: Piping Design Software Selection

Depends on if you are more concerned with the "cheapest" software, or the one that produces the best results for you.
Our company has been using PDS for several years and PDMS for the last 3 years. BOTH produce good results. Both have good features and both have their drawbacks. In the end,...if you ask the users who have used both, PDMS comes out on top. Project results and maintenace seem to be better with PDMS. Training is easier with PDMS.
However, BOTH are quite expensive. We use it on major pulp and paper projects around the world. Even with the substantial intitial investments, the results are worth it.
These are just a few observations from our designers.

RE: Piping Design Software Selection

Have you heard of EPLANT- Piping, P&ID and STH for 3D plant design. this product is developed by RELSOFT Argentina? You may visit their site www.e-eplant.com for more details. The product is copmatible with AutoCAD 2000 and other recent issues. I am told that it costs reasonable. Give a try and evaluate if you wish to work with lower budget.
Other softwares are PDS, PDMS, CADWorkx, AutoPLANT. Who says that AutoPLANT is phased. It is now being taken care of by Bentley. All Rebis products are in their kitty.

Narendra K. Roy
Gramya Research Analysis Institute,
PO box 4016, Vadodara 390015, India
Website: www.gramya.com ; www.charismaglobal.com

RE: Piping Design Software Selection

Dear All,

I would agree that PDS & PDMS are good but they are overpriced. I would put the results from Plant 4D P&ID and PIPE up against them anytime. A fraction of the cost, more user friendly and easier to customise. Try all the options before you buy is the only sensible solution.

Gramya,
In the UK autodesk dealers are saying Autoplant is dying, Autoplant users are saying it and they are losing users hand over fist. The only people who say Rebis products are still worth buying are REBIS dealers and from your website it would seem that you deal in REBIS products.

Thanks
PW

RE: Piping Design Software Selection

Have you look at the new Piping software called ACPlant? They are new to the US market.

RE: Piping Design Software Selection

Take a look at Plant-4D.  We go thru PIDS.  www.pidsusa.com.

It's a great software for P&ID's & Piping.

RE: Piping Design Software Selection

I have been using CADWorx for 3 years now, with AUTOCAD 2000, and I am really very pleased with it, since the Tech. support is "EXCELLENT". Can anybody out there using Piping Software shout about that as much.
I recommend it to any piping designer, it incorporates it's own Isometric program at no additional cost, even though for another sum, you can buy the more professional ISOGEN Isometric program which allows start to finish print outs of the 11X17 sheets automatically.
The data base is well endowed including Copper fittings for washroom layouts and Isometrics.
Go to www.coade.com for a demo copy.
I would like to hear back from any CADWorx users anywhere!

RE: Piping Design Software Selection

Hi e024342,

Concerning your compressed air application:

I agree with all your calculations.  I suppose your real question was whether you should use a 4" pipe or a 2" one.  That can only be answered knowing what the duty is.

The major difference between using the two different sizes would be the pressure drop.  If you could get a 1.9" pipe, the pressure drop would be about 125 PSI/100ft.  A standard 2" NB pipe would of course give a pressure drop quite a bit less than this.

By the way, these calculations are all based on the "new" condition pipe roughness. If you are designing for a life span of 5 to 10 years you can expect the roughness to double or treble over that period.

The 4" pipe would be the usual "economic" diameter to use.  There wouldn't be much point in compressing the air to the high pressures you mention, only to lose it in the piping. But if it was to be vented anyway then losing the pressure in the piping is no problem.

An air velocity of Mach 0.3 is a good guideline for vents. In a compressed air distribution system your velocity of 100 ft/s would be more realistic. When considering these velocities you need to know the condition of the air. If it is wet or dirty you will get erosion with high velocities.

regards
Harvey (Katmar)

RE: Piping Design Software Selection

AutoPIPE is user friendly  and having a vareity of options...

RE: Piping Design Software Selection

Intergraph PDS is actually on the way out and being replaced by Intergraph's new Smartplant 3D package. A fully 3D rendered user interface. Depends on how big your company is and what you expect out of the software. I work for a large oil and gas company and we use PDS. For links to instrumentation, we use INTools and in the near future we will probably be using SmartPlant P&ID (intelligent process and instrumentatíon diagrams) which all have links to PDS. As noted in this thread, both PDS and PDMS are expensive, but when i have asked people who have worked with both they say that PDMS is quicker initially to use, but PDS wins hands down when it comes to editing and changing line size for stuff already modelled. Just what i've heard.

RE: Piping Design Software Selection

I fully recommend this 3D piping software, plus it's less money than Rebis, which is failing to keep up to date.

............... CADWorx/PIPE ...................

Your contact will be Tel. 1-800-899-8787 ask for pat J.  
Just mention my name Tony Bagshaw he will look after you.

So carry on piping, the easy learning way.

RE: Piping Design Software Selection

Well the subject seems evergreen so I searched and decided to continue the topic instead of starting the new thread. Yes I am in the process of selecting a plant design software for my company and have narrowed down to PDMS or SmartPlant 3D. I am in contact with both the parties and both say we cannot give you any demo version to try my hands on because you cannot get any good idea of software with out the training!!!!#$@%.  
Now the idea of getting training of both the software and then making decision seems rather awkward. The other way is to buy the software blindly and be stuck with it for ever, good or bad. I have seen PDMS and it seems not so user friendly like most of the software which migrated to Windows environment rather late (no Undo most of the part and etc…). SmartPlant superlative description at Intergraph site seems very enticing and it seems to be user friendly and powerful. But I have not seen any one working on it so cannot be sure what it is like in reality.

Any feed back from the users of the two would be highly helpful.

Thanks.

Zen


RE: Piping Design Software Selection

Zeney,

Not sure if you have seen the latest version of PDMS: VPD PDMS 11.6? It will answer your questions: windows style, undo/redo, etc. etc....

Have fun.

Chris.

RE: Piping Design Software Selection

Here's my 2 cents.

If your good at getting around in 3D autoCAD and are a pretty good piping designer, than Cadworx is the way to go.  Good program with great support.  Easy to maintain specs and things like that.  If your doing plant design with multiple piping specs it is very useful.  Also get the Isogen package it works great to.  Produces some good looking ISO's if you ask me.

Incase any Coade people are reading this.
I do have several complaints (some people would call it a wish list) about Cadworx.  I have more than this but they are all minor.

Their equipment modeler is horrible.  I just use their piping components to build up my equipment and standard Acad commands and it works pretty well.

If they added one component to their spec builder system, you could build any piping spec in 30 minutes instead of the 4 hours it was taking me.  I suggested it to them 2 years ago haven't seen it added yet.

They now have a steel package which is pretty good.

Overall I give the package an A-

I miss it (changed jobs 6 months ago), in a different industry now and we are using Solidworks.



  

RE: Piping Design Software Selection

Try this for links to various software companies .... some may be out of date, but the majority are still good.

pipingdesigner
www.pipingdesigners.com

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