The advantages of automated piping isometric generation

These industry specialised drawings contain all the information needed to document and manufacture pipework. An indispensable tool for pipework fabrication. There are still many companies in mechanical and process engineering that manually draft piping isometrics when detailing their pipework designs. In this era of intelligent and affordable CAD solutions, this is entirely unnecessary work.

Pipework design: 3D preferred

Pipework for machinery is typically designed using 3D CAD software, such as PTC’s Creo Piping. For large-scale plant design, more specialised CAD software is often the preferred choice, such as M4 PLANT by CAD Schroer. These solutions are highly affordable given the speed with which designs can be produced, and the level of quality that can be achieved with them. The end result is a fully detailed pipework design together with comprehensive parts lists of the required pipes, valves, gaskets and bolts etc.

Fast, automated generation of piping isometrics

An intelligent approach is to use 3D pipework data from M4 PLANT or Creo Piping to automatically create unscaled piping isometrics complete with dimensions, parts lists, cut-length lists and pipe-bend tables, ready for manufacture. This can be achieved using M4 ISO, a software package that automatically generates piping isometrics using 3D pipework design data. The production-ready piping isometrics are delivered in seconds, styled to company standards. This is an immense advantage when compared to manual isometric drafting which is much more difficult, time consuming and error prone, and therefore far more expensive.

Production-ready documentation

By using standardized isometric symbols to represent piping components, M4 ISO provides production-ready documentation at the push of a button. Piping isometrics are understood by all pipework fabricators and clearly specify how to manufacture individual pipe spools and fasten them together. \

Although the drawings are unscaled, accurate dimensions and gradients show actual run-lengths and positions. Parts lists and pipe cut-length lists specify the exact quantity of materials required. Machine-ready pipe-bend tables can also be generated to aid the fabrication process if required. Even weld lists can be added to ensure continuous documentation on site and beyond.

Piping Isometrics as you like them

CAD Schroer's M4 ISO software for the production of piping isometric drawings is highly configurable. The layout, content, and appearance of the drawings produced can be customised to suit the customer’s specific requirements, including the use of the customer’s own drawing templates. With M4 ISO, piping isometrics are automatically created in the required style directly from the 3D pipework model.

www.cad-schroer.com