D-Points [Design Points]

This section provides details on creating and viewing D-Points.

Creating D-Points

In the AVEVA Point Cloud Manager Tools drop-down, there is an option to extract and display piping center points from the laser scan data. This operation enables the user to quickly determine and model from existing plant tie-in points without the need for position interrogation in other packages.

This procedure uses Point Cloud Manager’s in-built algorithm to fit piping to the point cloud in the area of interest, and then (from Marine) adds D-points to ends of pipes present in the Point Cloud Manager environment.

Pipe lengths should be trimmed to suit the tie-point before use in Marine.

The Point Cloud Manager Tool Palette also has options to extract D-Points directly from within the Marine environment.

Next, in the Marine graphical window, Point Cloud Manager tools drop-down menu, select Create AVEVA Point Cloud Manager D-Points:

• The XGEOM must be the current element CE prior to selection.

• Two D-Points will be created per pipe found in the Point Cloud Manager environment, at each end position on the pipe center-line.

Success of this operation can be confirmed in the Design Explorer by expanding the XGEOM level, where a series of DPSE's (DP sets) containing the DPCA data (DP Cartesian points) can be seen. The number of these will vary depending on the number of pipes in the AVEVA Point Cloud Manager environment.

Viewing D-Points

The D-Points can be displayed in Marine by selecting Show D-Points from the AVEVA Point Cloud Manager drop-down menu.

The D-Point viewer window is shown on the screen.

• With the XGEOM set as CE - Select the Set CE button.

• The pipe end point coordinates are displayed with unique names (1 ->).

• These points are also represented in the graphical window by green arrows.

Marine Users can access these points to commence modelling directly.

See examples below:

D-Point example:

The pipe visible in the point cloud data is going to form the basis of further modelling in the Marine environment, so D-Points have been placed at the required points within its length. These then display in the 3D view.

The numbers for each D-Point are shown in the 3D view at the tail of the identification arrow. The actual D-Point location is at the tail of this arrow.

Typical D-Point display

The following image displays a typical D-Point: