** UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Coordinated Plant Design Demonstration
We showcased Bentley product interoperability in a sample plant design scenario. The structural design of a substructure within a refining facility will be conducted and coordinated with mechanical systems. Advanced means of documentation, visualization, and conflict resolution using the Bentley product suite will be covered. Products demonstrated will include Microstran, STAAD Foundation Advanced, Bentley Navigator, ProStructures, and ISM. Methods of leveraging this information in design, construction, and operations will be shown.
Setting up the Team and Situation for the Demonstration
The design team for the demonstration consisted of Josh Taylor, who role played the project manager within a structural consultancy firm, and Wentao Zhang, who role played the lead structural designer. The structure considered was a refining facility (see Figure 1).
The tasks were:
a. Evaluate foundations and coordinate with exhaust ducts (See Figure 2). This was deemed necessary after clash detection was performed between the foundation and exhaut ducts. Clash Detection feature allows the user to select different models or different layers in the i-model and clash them with one another (See Figure 4).
b. Connection bearing width (See Figure 3)
Figure 1 - Bentley i-model, shown in Bentley Navigator, containing the various disciplines used as the basis of the plant design demonstration.
Bentley Navigator in Review Mode, allows use to explore model in 3D and assign markups to location. A markup is 2D snapshot of the model with annotation and markup tools. Markups are not limited to text, clouds, user can also append links to the markup such as links to PDF specification and links to folder locations.
Figure 2 - A Markup of the first task - Evaluate foundations and coordinate with exhaust ducts.
Figure 3 - A Markup of the second task - Connection Bearing Width, Constructability
Figure 4 - Clash Detection Feature
In the following video, I imported the ISM repository of the target structure into Microstran, note that I am using a development build of Microstran, the sync ISM feature should be available near the end of this year (2014).
In Microstran,
- Sync ISM->New from ISM, and select the ISM Repository corresponding to the support structure.
- I added the supports, loadcases and loads.
- I resized the beams supporting tank to suit connection bearing width the and analyzed the structure.
- I checked all steel member and conclude that all members pass design checks.
- I then use the UPDATE ISM command to update the ISM Repository with the updated beam size and analysis results.
In Structural Synchronizer, note that I have ultimate control on the objects I wish to commit to the repository. I selected the beams, loads, load cases, supports and reactions to commit to the repository, note also that I am prompted with a dialogue box for revision comments
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I then went into STAAD Foundation Advanced, STAAD Foundation Advanced is a comprehensive foundation design program that offers the ability to model complex or simple footings, including those specific to Plant facilities such as octagonal footings supporting vertical vessels, strap beam foundations supporting horizontal vessels, ring foundations supporting tank structures, and drilled or driven pier foundations.
Common foundations such as isolated footings, combined footings, strip footings, pile caps, and mat foundations can also be designed for larger structures or using parametric wizards. It provides a streamlined workflow through its integration with STAAD.Pro and can also be used as a stand-alone program. Now that Microstran is ISM Enabled, we can design foundations from Microstran via ISM also. After the foundation design was done, we again invoked the UPDATE ISM command.
Note that ISM is more than just a file format, its a platform for visualization and change managment, note that I can query the differences between the last two revision of the repository by using the DIFF command.
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In the following video, I used ProStructures to create engineering drawings from the ISM Repository we have been modifying thus far. The steps involved creating workframes, views and drawing sheets.
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We reviewed the original file that the i-Model was created from, and we updated the reference of the support structure to point to the revise version from ProStructures. We then went back to the mark-up and reran the Clash Detection job, as its dynamically linked to all the reference files, it now shows that clashes around the foundations have been resolved.
We set the status of the 2 actions to "Completed" and checked the Markups back into ProjectWise, completing the loop and back to the Project Manager.
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