Best Pipe Stress Analysis Program 1

[FabianoRibeiro]

I intend to buy a pipe stress analysis software and would like to know the pros and cons of each software. I made a research in the internet and found the following:

Caesar II
Caepipe
Autopipe
Triflex

Which one do you think is the best purchase?

 

[AllHandlesTaken]

I like Mr. Breen's answer in this previous thread:

http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=37361

because I trust his knowledge/expertise, and I am ignorant of other programs. I have only used Caesar II, and while I think it is really good, I have nothing to compare it to.

 

[LSThill]

FabianoRibeiro

PRG PCL-Gold Pipe stress analysis capabilities including 18+dreee of freedom beam elements. PCL-Gold is the pipe stress program to run a finite element analysis for the components that required it.



L S THILL

 

[NozzleTwister]

Something to consider when buying a program is the support that you have available for the software.

CAESAR II has support pretty much 24-7. You can call them, e-mail them or post your problems on their discussion forums for the world to help you.

I had an experience about a year ago with a different pipe stress software while reviewing some calculations done by a sub-contractor. I had a question about the software and had to fill out a request on-line for them to call me back at their convenience. When they called me back a couple of days later I asked the guy for his number so I could call him direct next time. He refused and said their only support was through the on-line request forms.

If you're looking at cheaper software than CAESAR II, consider the kind of software support you're gonna get.

NozzleTwister
Houston, Texas

 

[MJCronin]

I agree with all of the comments above regarding CII

(It is also important to point out that CII has the largest share of the market ( as I recall))

Also, IMHO the comments by a Mr. Cronin in the previous thread are also witty, spot-on and technically astute.

Regards

-MJC

 

[ZippyDDoodah]

I'm a structural engineer who's fairly new to pipe stress engineering. We have Autopipe and Caesar II, and although I agree Coade support seems good, using and learning the program is difficult. It's slow and not intuitive. Autopipe isn't perfect, but it's more intuitive and windows-like than Caesar, and Bentley support is not bad from what I've experienced. I'd bet good $$ that if you took 2 equally experienced engineers (if that was possible) who hadn't used either program and assigned 1 to work with Autopipe and the other to work with Caesar II, the engineer working with Autopipe would become productive with Autopipe in a much shorter period of time.

It may just be me, but I detect a somewhat knee-jerk emotional defense of Caesar among pipe stress engineers when discussing other piping programs. And I've seen first hand that C2 is not all that. I'm guessing that some of this defensive posture may be based on Coade tech support being there in the past when they needed them or maybe they don't really know other pipe stress program so they reflexively recommend what they know. Caesar does seem to be the most widely used, but I've learned that Autopipe is widely used by some big firms like Fluor and Worley Parsons, so it's not like all the big companies agree that Caesar is better.

I haven't used Triflex or Caepipe, so I can't comment on those programs, but I would try and match your needs with the software. If you're going to need buried pipeline analysis, or offshore capabilities, structural modeling or if you will need to use a specific international piping code, you'll want to consider those issues in your choice.

 

[StevenHPerry]

Zippy is correct about the learning curves for operating C2 vs AutoPipe, but it's a double edged sword.

AutoPIPE allows one to learn the software quickly and once the interface and shortcut keys are memorized, the modeling, analysis, and tweaking can be done very rapidly. But with this, the temptation is to not put too much thought into the analysis. Just click buttons and see what the computer spits out.

No software is immune to the engineers who just push buttons, but in my limited experience I think AutoPIPE may be more susceptible to this.

 

[SOROURA]

StevenHPerry and Zippy,

I totally agree with you. My company uses its own program that is probably not as interactive as C2 or any of the other commercial programs out there, but believe me, it is very comprehensive when it comes to the output and gives you a breakdown of all the analysis results in a very raw form. The rawer the nature of the results the more thought you need out of the analyst. On the other hand, with a typically lazy engineer who has the tendancy of getting outputs with the least spent effort, it is absolutely dangerous to deal with this program.

Bottom line, whatever program you use, engineering is always engineering, and wise judgement and good understanding of the inputs/outputs determine how close the analysis is to reality and that's what all of us want to achieve.