It consists of the following 4 main processors.

Pre Processor

Pre processor reads the design model and attributes that are referenced in the drawing. There is more than one view in the drawing in general. All the data are extracted and distributed to the related views. The extracted data is refined and forwarded to HSR processor.

At this point, all the coordinates are the model coordinates. They should be transformed into the drawing coordinates by considering the view direction, view scale, view rotation in the drawing.

In general, there are 5 kinds of design models to be read as follows:

¨ª       Piping design model

¨ª       Equipment design model

¨ª       Structure design model

¨ª       HVAC design model

¨ª       Electric cable tray design model

HSR (Hidden Surface Removal) Processor

The piping general arrangement drawing has many piping components, equipments geometry, & others to be described and should be represented by user's requirements. PlantWAVE has a HSR (Hidden Surface Removal) Processor that automatically generates 2D drawing file, which is called Hidden drawing. The HSR processor of PlantWAVE uses the smart and fast algorithm for doing this.

PlantWAVE has an option for Hidden ON/OFF and various display options with symbol mark. The followings are the sample figures for the example of Hidden ON/OFF.

In case of (d) of the above figure the pipe is displayed as single line with elbow symbol. Like this, PlantWAVE can generate the drawing applying the user's option by replacing the result of the Hidden Surface Removal with various symbol mark.  User can select the option as (b) of the above figure (all Hidden Off), which is as shown real. This option may be used in general projects. Some user may select (d) of the above figure. This option is fit for the projects of the detail piping drawing like traditional manual style.

The following is the sessions in {Hidden} stage.

¨ª       Hidden Line On/Off

¨ª       Selective Line Display & Hidden On/OFF by size

¨ª       Hidden Options for pipe, elbow (Weld and SW &THD) and Tee.

FSS (Free Space Search & Optimization) Processor

It is very iterative and time intensive job for calculating to find the best location to place the label without interference with others.

Moreover, because each annotation has its text string, leader lines and enclosure symbol such as circle/box, it has to have the intelligent and high-level geometry reasoning function for the high-speed process.

PlantWAVE has an intelligent and sophisticated geometry-reasoning processor (which we call it 2D free space search & optimization processor, FSS processor) for the annotation for the design elements.

This FSS processor plays an important role of the drawing quality and it's very important to do this at a short time for the productivity of the drawings.

All the labels should be placed as short as possible from the origin point of the tagged item by avoiding the interference with any other geometries, other text strings, leaders and enclosing shapes which were placed previously during the whole annotation process.

FSS processor can control to place the label for minimum interference with others, if there is not enough blank space or it is intricate around the tagged item in the drawing. It can make the label go further until finding the location of less interference with others by user's option.

Post Processor

PlantWAVE post-processor consists of following modules.

Writer

Writer is to write the output drawing and the others such as nozzle chart. All output is written by keeping the user's option so as to be controlled after generation of the drawing. The output file format of the drawing is DWG of AutoCAD or DGN of M MicroStation and the others are text or Microsoft Excel format. You do not need to have MicroStation in your PC for making DGN file. PlantWAVE will directly write DGN file without using MicroStation.

Reporter

It writes the report per drawing by optional.

Drawing Editor

The basic policy of PlantWAVE is no modification after automatic generation of the drawing. However, some users may want to modify the output drawing (dimension and annotated drawing) to enhance it. The options that were applied to the writer are used when modifying the output drawing. This module is tightly coupled with AutoCAD environment. It is very easy to use and intuitive for the AutoCAD user.