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Software Reduces Field Rework 90% for Cooling Water System Project
AEC Design Group CADPIPE Software

Valdes Engineering Company in Lombard, Ill., has been providing a wide range of mechanical, electrical/instrumentation engineering, civil/structural and process engineering services to some of the largest petroleum, chemical, power, pharmaceutical, and food and beverage corporations in the United States since 1992. With hundreds of man-years of experience in these core-engineering disciplines, Valdes offers a full range of solutions to its clients.

At a large U.S. refinery, the underground cooling water system from an existing water station was very old and had exceeded its useful life. Leaks were occurring at a rate of two to three per year.

Objectives

The project included replacement of the aged and failure-prone underground cooling water system with a new aboveground system from the existing water station to the unit complex as well as abandonment of the existing cooling water supply piping.
The objective was to build in reliability by incorporating isolation valves and emergency connections that would allow a section of damaged pipe to be isolated while still supplying the other units with cooling water.

Project

A 3-D CAD model of the new aboveground cooling water supply/return headers needed to be established. Valdes used Lica Geosystems laser scanning equipment to survey the plant and create a PointCloud file.

Valdes used the CADPIPE suite of AutoCAD based process piping software products to create the as-built 3-D model from the PointCloud information. CADPIPE was also used to design the modifica tions and additional pipe runs and automatically create the manufacturing spool drawing from the 3-D model. The project was 10 months long, involved four CAD designers and more than 550 manufacturing spools. The Valdes engineering team for this project found CADPIPE specification and automatic spool capabilities essential to complete the project.

The engineering manager said, "Because of CADPIPE, we were able to deliver the project ahead of schedule and under budget. The ability to integrate all the information using CADPIPE reduced field reworks 90 to 95 percent."

CADPIPE modules are specification based and include 3-D Design, ISO and P&ID. Features include auto-pipe, auto-elbow, auto-annotate, auto-iso and collision detection. ArTrA is CAD independent 3-D Asset Management software that attaches all documentation and data to objects in the model with the capability to do complex searches.

Benefits:

• Reduced time and cost during the design phase.
• Reduced errors in fabrication and installation to minimize waste.
• 3D coordination of trades to identify and correct conflicts before construction.
• Detailed Bill of Materials and reporting for purchasing, delivery and installation.
• Automatic generation of spool/fabrication drawings from 3D model.
  

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Valdes Engineering Company (VEC) sets the standard for excellence in engineering serving regional, national and global corporations with on-time, on-budget projects. VEC is a Chicago-based engineering consulting firm, specializing in the petrochemical refining, power, chemical and manufacturing industries.