Ludan Engineering achieves record time savings with Intergraph CADWorx P&ID Professional

The engineering contractor successfully creates process deliverables subject to a new Client symbols library and document formats at very tight time schedule using CADWorx P&ID Professional tools set.

Ludan Engineering was involved in a Basic Engineering project of a new Waste Water Treatment Plant in Russia.
Ludan Engineering, one of the most diversified providers of integrated solutions for industrial development and plant optimization in Europe, was in charge of the engineering project. Multiple advisory and design teams over the Globe participated in the project while Ludan Engineering was responsible for integrity of the final deliverables to the Client.

Powerful design solution
The project had a very tight schedule and the time between getting the information from the partners to the delivering of final documents to the Client was extremely short. This required the use of very powerful design tools with high customization flexibility to incorporate the Client format requirements and the choice was made to use CADWorx P&ID Professional tools set. Before this project, Ludan Engineering used AutoCAD as their standard tool.

The Client sent the extensive procedures for document numbering as well as for tagging of equipment, lines, valves, fittings, instruments etc. as well as the required drawing symbols and line patterns  – all of which are available in the PDF form. Thanks to extremely easy customization, all these symbols and line patterns were defined in the CADWorx P&ID Professional with a little effort, mainly, from the drafters’ side.  The CADWorx P&ID Professional allows users to incorporate any tagging rules for equipment, lines, valves, fittings, instruments etc.

Improving efficiency
All deliverables in this project were bi-lingual in Russian and English. The flexibility of CADWorx P&ID Professional enabled it to have equipment descriptions in both English and Russian that were shared in Process Flow Diagrams (PFD) / Piping & Instruments Diagrams (P&ID) / Equipment and Instruments datasheets / Equipment List etc.

To shorten the design time, each participating advisory team worked in their own document and drawing formats. The extremely simple and transparent database scheme of CADWorx P&ID Professional allowed easy incorporation of the coming materials directly into the CADWorx P&ID Professional database with a further simultaneous update of all relevant documentation.

Smarter design
CADWorx P&ID Professional allowed Ludan to work “smart” at any design stage. The interface made it possible to define equipment items in block diagram and then use these definitions later on PFD and P&ID design stages. It’s also possible to define the equipment in the database before the drawing creation and then later during the drawing creation process use this available database data.

The drawing creation process automatically generates the project database behind the drawing elements. However, the flexibility of the CADWorx P&ID allows users to repeatedly un-link and link-back the drawing elements to/from the database by the simple mouse-clicking. In other words, it’s possible to use CADWorx P&ID as the ordinary AutoCAD as well as the universal drawing creation tool. Many experienced AutoCAD users will like the lisps and macros provided by CADWorx P&ID. For novice users, CADWorx P&ID is a find. The CADWorx P&ID Professional works with the following three external database formats: MS Access, SQL and Oracle. CADWorx P&ID Professional allows users to add custom created database Tables at any project design stage and repeatedly link/un-link any drawing element to these Tables. This database customization is extremely easy and doesn’t require the user to possess any previous special database knowledge or programming skills.

Thanks to live bi-directional links to a database, the company can easily integrate Mass & Heat balance tables presented in Block-Diagram/PFD with the calculated results from Aspen, HYSYS, CHEMCAD, PIPENET etc. Thanks to the ability to store the coordinates of each drawn element in database, it”s possible to generate the PIPENET input file based on the AutoCAD drawing.

“The benefits of the tool were very apparent from the beginning and included easy customization – no programming skills are required; high flexibility – it”s possible to work “smart” from the Block Diagram project stage; and a very full tools set: Datasheet module, Internet Publisher, data inheritance, piping spec. control, etc.”, explains Boris M. Solovyev, Ph. D. ChE., Senior Process Engineer at Ludan Engineering. “Time savings can also be significant, depending on the type of project. For instance, if the project has multiple instruments and control loops, the Instrument Index is generated automatically with the P&ID progress, as well as equipment and instruments datasheets. This case corresponds to 90% time savings, in comparison to the conventional Instrument and Equipment data filling. If the project is drawing creation itself, for an AutoCAD novice user, CADWorx P&ID can save 50% of time”.

The CADWorx P&ID Professional also proved itself as a great conversion tool of the ordinary AutoCAD drawings to intelligent ones, incorporating all available project documentation: datasheets, Equipment and Lines Lists etc.   

Future Steps
Ludan Engineering is broadening its project portfolio and has used CADWorx P&ID in nine projects and plan to further standardize the use of the tool in their increasing portfolio. In the near future, the company plans to train 15 staff in the use of the tool. Thanks to the CADWorx P&ID success, the CADWorx Plant Professional suite currently passes the trial period and will be validated on the real project.