Basic Concepts

This section describes some of the basic concepts of the Piping & Tubing Design apps.

This page discusses:

Piping and Tubing Components
Filtration of Components
Management of Resources

Piping and Tubing Components

This section describes the types of components used in the Piping & Tubing Design apps.

There are two categories of components:

Predrawn component parts such as equipment, piping/tubing parts, supports and insulation parts, saved in the PLM Database.
Components such as pipes/tubes and insulation that you can create "on-the-fly" in the work area of the Piping & Tubing 3D Design app.

The PLM Database is the repository for all the component parts you place in your Piping & Tubing designs (equipment, piping/tubing parts, supports and insulation parts). During component placement, users have a choice of methods of selecting a component from the PLM Database:


To select from		Click
Whole of database		Find part using chooser
Whole of database + additional filter on Part Subtype...		Define part sub type or select a new part
Catalog or Chapter in database		Find part using catalog
Catalog or Chapter in database + additional filter on Part Subtype...		Define part sub type or select a new part

Note: The selection method when using Define part sub type or select a new part

depends on your choice of setting in Me > Preferences > Data source for part selection:

Search part from catalog
Search part from database

Filtration of Components

Standards and specifications act as filters during component selection in the Piping & Tubing Design apps.

Standards Driven

This section describes the selection of components based on a standard.

This method of component selection filter the contents of the catalog. The filtration is based on the value of the standard in use (such as ASME, ANSI, DIN) plus the value of nominal size. If required, include other associated discrete values (Rating, End Style, Outside Diameter, Wall Thickness).

You can see the components that pass the filter as choices for component placement in the physical work area:

Specification Driven

This section describes the selection of components based on specifications linked to a Line ID.

This method first filter the contents of the catalog by a standard and nominal size, and then filter them a second time using a query given by specification rules tables.

This query presents the user with components from the catalog that are suitable for a given specification:

To use this specification driven selection, you must have a Line ID defined in your system. Because a Line ID must be defined in the logical reference of an RFLP tree, you must therefore be working in an RFLP context to use specification driven component selection.

Management of Resources

Piping & Tubing Design apps rely on a large range of setup data (resources). The apps define what resources you require. Make sure they are properly configured and managed.

The Data Setup app is the system you use to configure and manage your resources and catalogs.

Data Setup eases the process of managing the resources:

Using Data Setup, the administrator creates resource sets and then assigns resource files (such as catalogs of components, standards and specifications) to the resource sets.
Using Data Setup, the administrator then binds these resource sets to specific People and Organization projects.
Users of the Piping & Tubing Design apps in a given People and Organization context then have access to all the resources bound to the project.

You can associate different packs of resources for every discipline and project. You therefore get the correct resource (for example, a catalog of equipment) for the discipline in which they are working in the context of their project.

Data Setup provides the following benefits:

It provides a unified and centralized solution for managing setup data.
It allows authorized or valid setup data associations only.
It reduces the time taken to retrieve resources at run time, therefore, improving performance.
Data Setup is accessible to the designer and the administrator of the application and you can use it at any time of the application development phase.