I am asking several questions here:

1. Do you use the information for piping from a Cadworx model to load into CAESAR II or do you use the iso's and manually enter the inputs?

2. If you manually input, why? My understanding at my company is that simple isometrics are ok, but complicated ones are better off with manual input due to too many corrections?

3. can you give me a good argument to convince management that it can be a success from Cadworx models straight to CAESAR II and to be able to prove to the piping stress engineers that it can be done without hassle?

Thank you in advance for your time.

I've brought this up with our stress engineers from time to time. They report several large hurdles:

1. As you noted, too many corrections on complicated lines

2. The CADWorx export doesn't provide for the node sequencing/numbering they like, so they would have to mass-renumber nodes. I'm not sure if that feature is available yet in CAESAR.

3. Piping designers don't necessarily know which items to include/exclude from the export, and the stress engineers don't want to spend the time to learn the ins and outs of CADWorx to do it themselves.

4. Lack of trust, that they are getting what has been modeled and something hasn't been left out or modeled incorrectly. As engineers they have a much higher level of responsibility to "get it right" so there is a bit of a valid control issue there.

3. maybe a set of instructions can be developed if piping designers and stress engineers take some time and sit at the same table.

With regard to points 1 & 2 above:

1) The most common issue is that the CADWorx model are not checked for continuity before export. The export to CAESAR II requires a line free of disconnects. The new CADWorx Discontinuity View tool can be used to fix discontinuity issues before export to decrease correction required in CAESAR II.

2) The export from CADWorx does have an option to assign node numbers. However, as you mentioned in #3, the stress engineer would have to communicate to the designer how they would like the model node numbering configured during export. The next version of CAESAR II (2012) will include additional functionality in the LIST processor (Flip and Move) to assist the stress engineer with this sort of rearrangement for models transferred in from CAD environments.

How about some interface that create nodes/elements without numbers and that give possibility to the stress engineer to manually assign in graphic mode these numbers?

Regards,

For CAESAR II, the nodes must exist; this defines the end points of elements. The actual numbers can (and should) be controlled by the user. This functionality already exists in CAESAR II. Provided that your elements are in "correct order" in the model (in the "way you would walk the pipe", for example; that's where Flip and Move commands would help), you can perform the Renumber operation and assign nodes in your preferred way.
And again, a lot of this can be controlled on the CWx side at the time of export.

I agree, but what I think that would be fine if I have full control of the numbering process. I do not know how "Flip and Move" works, it will be interesting to see it. Renumbering operation have some limitations. Some things will be done in automatic. Only begining node number and "Node increment" is manual. I will try to explain better. If I have a long run without supports I normaly skip some numbers from the sequence for future breaks. This will not be done by renumbering because caesar do not know my intentions. For flanges, I will assign numbers that end with 1. And so on...

Maybe this can be done like this: Let AI to assign the node numbers, then hide them to the user, let user to define the node numbers as he wish, overwrite the old numbers. Sound crazy but one of the main reason stress engineers reject automation of the stress model is because they do not have full control of the process.

Regards,

I forgot: all the things I said - need to be before the export have place.