Description

«Pipeline Designer» — is a software complex intended for designing units for gas-and-water supply with a wide choice of tools necessary for automation of water systems designer's work. The project was developed at the request of "TST" LLC.

The Goal of the Project

To develop software that would enable a design engineer to create a complete project of a water supply unit in the shortest possible time. One of the main goals of the program is to save the designer the trouble of drawing parts and creating specification manually, and to ensure the full automation of all workflows.

Implementation

In course of working on the project, we developed two applications: the one for designing gas-and-water supply units, i.e., a user program, and the other for editing parts database, i.e., the application for administrators.

The main application

When starting his/her work with the application, the user sees a beautifully decorated window where he/shecan select the type of the supply unit being designed, or find information about the company.

On the basis of the user-defined parameters of the project, filters of the parts and additional parameters are automatically generated. The user will only work with the parts that are suitable for this type of project.

Now we can proceed to the main point, i.e., creating the unit itself.

After loading the parts that are suitable for the project, the user can see the main program window that includes the toolbar (top), the parts list (left), the working window where the designer connects the parts (center), and the informative part with the properties of the selected items (right).

While creating the unit, the designer can use numerous functional capabilities:

• Operations with the parts (moving across the canvas, turning, editing properties, etc.)
• An intelligent algorithm of selecting the part needed for the current joint
• Editing centerlines
• Creating and editing dimension lines
• Creating and editing extension lines
• Zooming
• Saving the unit to a file
• Automatic generation of the detailed unit specification as a Word document
• Exporting the unit to a popular DXF format for exchanging graphical information
• Unit printout
• Sending a draft to the company's experts for cost calculation

The advantages of using the Pipeline Designer application, as compared to AutoCAD and other common CAD systems:

• Displaying full database of parts that are compatible with the project
• Automatic selection of the part with suitable diameter
• Checking appropriateness of joints
• Automatic generation of all necessary project documents: specifications, drawings, etc.
• Sending the project for cost calculation in one click.

Dimensional lines in the project:

Extension lines in the project:

Preparing specifications in the program:

Exporting specifications into MS Word:

Project after its export into AutoCAD:

Printing the finished project:

Administration module

The administration module developed by our team makes it possible for the employees of the "TST" companyto edit the current parts database.

The application interface for administrators is intuitive, and makes it possible to modify the existing parts and add new ones in a simple editor.

The administrator does not have to manually input parts parameters; they are to be listed in the application once, and afterwards the required values are selected from the list.

The result

Thus, the result of our work is a high-quality product that allows users to easily, quickly and convenientlydesign units of any complexity for gas-and-water supply systems. Full automation of the process of generating specifications, printing drawings and simplified assembly process have reduced the total time required forproject preparation and calculation by more than 70%.