CAPD - computer-aided plant design

The layout of chemical plants has to take into consideration boundary conditions and requirements of many different engineering fields. In order to assist the design engineer at an early stage during the extended basic engineering, a system for computer aided plant design has been developed. It contains modules for •extended equipment models including equipment related piping and areas for maintenance, •estimation of the steel structure, •layout modelling by rule based algorithms and force directed placement as well as •pipe routing. At last the quality of the plant layout is evaluated in order to indicate how the design can be improved. The application of the design methods have been proven by industrial projects.