Clean Pipes & Apply Standards

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Clean Pipes & Apply Standards

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Getting Started

This article will cover the Clean Pipes and Apply Standards portion of the piping workflow. To begin this workflow, ensure you have a point database model, and piping model for your project already created, QA’ed, cleaned and opened.


Clean Pipes

Clean Pipes does multiple actions behind the scenes. Understanding these actions and their results can help you clean much more effectively.

Firstly, Clean Pipes takes the weighted average of the diameter of the cylinders in a chain, and applies it to the connected chain. It also attempts to optimize and straighten segments into one continuous segment based on a set tolerance. Additionally, this tool will refit the cleaned pipe chain to the point cloud. Lastly, clean pipes finalizes the black straight connectors and turns them into exportable pipes. Elbows, reducers, tees, valves, and flanges, are always, and should always, be black in color. It is only straight connectors that need to be switched from black to their respective color during the clean process.

Fig 1: Clean Pipes

Clean via Chain Info Smartsheet

We strongly recommend using the clean tool in the Chain Info SmartSheet rather then the global Clean Pipes tool. The Chain Info Smartsheet clean tool only cleans the selected chain(s), instead of the whole model, giving you more control and precision.

  • Open the Chain Info Smartsheet by clicking on the smartsheet drop down and then clicking Chain Info Smartsheet. Alternatively, click the I key on your keyboard.
  • Select the chains you want to clean in the Chain Info Smartsheet by using Shift or Ctrl click. You can select multiple chains in the 3D view with a Shift Click.
multi selected clean pipes
Fig 2: Chain Info Smartsheet Clean
  • Select the Clean button at the bottom-left of the Chain Info Smartsheet.
  • The Clean Pipes Settings dialog will appear.
  • Click OK to clean your selected pipe chain(s).
Clean Pipes Dialog
Fig 3: Clean Pipes Tolerance

Clean Pipes Settings Dialogue

Merge Collinear Pipes: If this option is checked, the optimization, refitting and finalizing of connectors will occur, as shown in Fig 1. Pipes whose shared endpoints do not deviate outside the specified tolerance from the perfectly straight As-Designed centerline, will be joined to become a single pipe without splits. If this option is not checked, only the weighted average will occur. Note: Merge Collinear Pipes will always be applied when using the Clean tool in the Chain Info Smartsheet, even if the option is unchecked.

Tolerance: The distance used to determine if two pipe segments should be merged into a single pipe. This compares the shared end vertices of each pipe segment vs. the centerline of the possible resulting pipe; if the vertex is within this distance, the pipes are merged.

Refit: This option is not shown in the Clean Pipes Settings dialog, however, the ‘Refit?‘ Column in the Chain Info SmartSheet governs whether the pipe run in question will be refit during the cleaning process.


Clean Pipes – Recommendations & Best Practices

Again, it is strongly recommended to only use the Clean tool in the Chain Info Smartsheet. First, the Smartsheet Clean tool gives more control and situational awareness to the appliance of tolerances than the Global Clean Pipes tool. For example:

Applying a 1″ tolerance to a 2″ pipe will allow ONLY significant sag or deviations in that pipe to be shown.

Applying a 1″ tolerance to a 15″ pipe will NOT optimize or straighten relatively small details.

Additionally, there is a known issue in the Clean Pipes algorithm in which, for certain pipe run configurations, some or all components in a run may be erroneously deleted. Identifying and correcting these errors is more difficult after using the Global Clean Pipes tool, as the missing components may not be immediately obvious.

We also highly recommend saving a separate copy of your pipe model BEFORE beginning the Cleaning process. The need to revert to the pre-cleaned model may arise and this is your only way to revert to that model.


Cleaning Loops

The Clean Pipes algorithm is not designed to handle loops, and will often fail to clean loops, delete components inside loops, or delete the loop altogether. If there are loops present in the model, Clean Pipes will present the following options:

  • Skip Loops: Components in question that are part of loops will not be ‘cleaned’ (Recommended)
  • Continue: All components in question will be ‘cleaned’. (Not Recommended)
  • Cancel: Do not ‘clean’ at all.

To successfully clean a loop, the loop needs to be broken, cleaned, and then completed again, as shown below. We recommend breaking the loop by removing an Elbow or Tee, but never a straight Pipe, as reconnecting a straight Pipe usually requires additional cleaning.

Loop
Fig 4: A simple loop configuration – with one uncleaned component, highlighted in red
loop highlighted by clean pipes
Fig 5: The loop, highlighted by Clean Pipes
breaking the loop
Figure 6: To break the loop, select and delete a connector, preferably an Elbow using the Edit tool (E)
cleaning the loop
Fig 7: Once the loop is broken use Clean to finalize the run (Note that the black straight connector is gone)
finished cleaned loop
Fig 8: Finally, re-create the elbow to finish the loop using the Connect tool (C)

Quick and Easy Clean Pipes and Apply Standards Steps

Refer to the steps below for a quick and easy guide to Cleaning Pipes and then Applying Standards.

  • Open the Chain Info Smartsheet by clicking on the Smartsheet drop down and then clicking Chain Info Smartsheet. Alternatively, click the I key on your keyboard.
  • Select the chains you want to clean in the Chain Info Smartsheet by using Shift or Ctrl click. You can select multiple chains in the 3D view with a Shift Click.
  • Once you have made your selection, Select the Clean button at the bottom-left of the Chain Info Smartsheet.
  • The Clean Pipes Settings dialog will appear.
  • If you don’t want to have a lot of sags or bends in the model, increase the tolerance value.
  • If you want to preserve the as-built condition, keep the tolerance value low.
  • Click OK.
  • If you wish to Apply Standards right after cleaning, proceed to the next steps.
  • Select the previously cleaned chains in the Chain Info SmartSheet
  • Click MultiEdit at the bottom-left of the Chain Info Smartsheet.
  • Change the column name to Standards and adjust the value to the Spec sheet you would like to use.

Apply Standards

Apply Standards takes the diameter of the pipe and converts it to the closest fabricated diameter in a defined spec.

There is a global Apply Standards button found in the piping tab in the ribbon. However, it is recommended to edit the standards on a selection basis as you may have different pressure ratings in your project. It is recommended to Save As before you globally Apply Standards as this function can not be undone.

To apply standards on a selection basis, first open your Chain Info Smartsheet by pressing the Smartsheet drop down button and select Chain Info Smartsheet. If you would like to change the standard and pressure rating of just one pipe, use the Standard and Pressure Rating drop down menus in their respective columns. However, if you want to select multiple pipes, use ctrl left click to make your selection in the Chain Info Smartsheet. Alternatively, use shift and left click in the 3D view. Now click the multi-edit button in the bottom-left hand corner of the chain info Smartsheet.

Fig 9: Multiple Items Edit Box

This will open the Multiple Items Edit Box. Change the Column Name to Standard, and then change the Value to whichever standard you would like to apply. Once you click OK the previously selected pipes will now have their standards applied.

Fig 10: Standards Applied

If you wish to change the Pressure Rating, follow the steps above but change the Column Name to Pressure Rating.

The Apply Standards global tool in the Piping tab, will not replace the standard of a pipe that already has a standards associated with it.

EdgeWise comes with a few out of box standards, but you can always make your own. Find out how to do that here.

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