Automatic Guideline Creation (PE)

Plant Engineering >Guideline Tools > AutoGuideline

The AutoGuideline function enables you to create a guideline with up to three intermediate points automatically, and place straight pipes or elbows on it. You simply need to specify the connections at the start and end of the guideline.

The settings required for automatic creation and placing of parts can be specified via the Settings for automatic guideline creation.

To create guidelines automatically, proceed as follows:

First check the Settings specified for the AutoGuideline function. If required, modify the settings and confirm with OK.

Invoke the AutoGuideline function.

Using point option J (isolated point), select the connecting points on which the guideline should start and end.

After specifying the connecting points, the C-edge alternatives dialogue window is displayed.

In this window HiCAD suggests the possible routes of the c-edge. Click the Next button to skip to the next alternative. Parallelisms between individual edges of the current guideline and the coordinate axes are also indicated.

Click the Apply button to accept and insert the current guideline. If you want to process the guideline before insertion, activate the

Process c-edge checkbox before clicking Apply.

If the appropriate settings have been made, HiCAD places the appropriate parts accordingly and carries out a collision check. HiCAD checks whether parts placed on pipelines collide with parts existing in the layout plan. It will however not be checked whether there are collisions of already existing parts. The detected collisions will be displayed one by one.

Please note:

Let us assume that connecting surfaces are appropriately aligned, guidelines are set parallel to the World CS. If the line of development cannot be unambiguously determined, an alternative route is offered for selection.

If the start point of the new guideline is placed on the start point or end point of an already existing guideline belonging to the same pipeline, the existing guideline and the new guideline will be merged into one within the resulting, new guideline part. The corresponding previous part of the existing guideline will then no longer exist. The new guideline always adopts with its first edge the direction of the existing guideline, except in cases where a down-grade has been specified. Without a down-grade, the two edges converging in the start point of the new guideline will be merged. The same applies to the end point of the new guideline.

For the auto-routing with down-grade, the start point of the new guideline must always be located above its end point.

The Guidelines dialogue window is only displayed if the Always display this dialogue checkbox has been activated in the dialogue after calling the Settings: AutoGuidelines function!

In the Configuration Editor at Plant Engineering > C-edge > Router, you can use the parameter Offer route for editing to determine whether the Process c-edge checkbox in the dialogue window is activate by default or not.

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