Several of my co-workers have begun to get models for CAESAR II exported directly from CADWorx. One common item to all of them so far is the amount of errors that have to be fixed by the engineer in CAESAR II. The nodes are in no particular order, bends and tees are producing errors and require resequencing of elements, etc.

Is this common among others here? I'm not sure if this is error on the CADD operator due to how they export or how they build the model because this has happened with several different operators. Curious if others have managed to successfully export usable models first try because as things currently stand I can create models from scratch faster and cleaner than it takes CADD to export and engineer to fix in CAESAR II.

I haven't done a lot of automatic conversion for the reasons you list. However, I do have some success stories worth mentioning.

1. Lines that go from point a to b without deviation come with higher levels of success. Trunnions and the like are also branches, and subject to errors, especially on bends.
2. Lines where the designer routes from point a to b without going back and making reroutes are also subject to fewer errors.

I once had over 8,000 linear feet of pipe pop up into CAESAR from PCF files without any hiccups, also following what a "reasonable analyst" would model. However, subsequent imports would provide outlandish results.

Not sure this helps, but maybe it'll get you closer to a better workflow.

Hi ZDawg

Over the years of trying to get the importing to work from Cadworx into a usable CAESAR II file without having node numbers out of sequence and all over the place, I realised that in the Cadworx model, piping and all components must be absolutely connected and we make use of the tolerance function in Cadworx to check that all components are connected.

Disconnects in Cadworx are what causes the node numbers to jump elsewhere out of the desired sequence.

This has worked for me with minimum corrections required in the Caesar model.

Hopefully this helps.

Thank you
Best Regards
Ryan Martin

ZDAWG,

Can you create a service request on SmartSupport and send in your files? If you don't have an account send an email to crm.ppm@hexagon.com. Or go to https://smartsupport1.intergraph.com and create a login. Once you gain access select file SR and follow the prompts.

I would agree the disconnects are a common isssue.

I'm somewhat partial to using PCF (via isometric generation) over directly generating CAESAR II files, as the iso drawings are a useful immediate "sanity check" on what the configuration should be.

Aside from connectivity, have to watch pipers getting a "case of the clevers" i.e. trying to work around the program without considering the data implications. Things putting multiple intelligent components into the same group, faking in components (once had someone try to pass off two overlapping reducing tees as a basket filter...).

Computer follows computer logic, not human. So it will give you the element sequence in the order that the pipe was modeled. Ideally not to have small bore piping attached or even worse, taps on the fittings.