Pipe animation

Cow Dung and "n lev" hit on it but it bears repeating. Animation usually shows the intended state of a component or system only--not the actual state if a failure occurs. This can lead to confusion by production types, and their response to that confusion could be to start pushing buttons. Caution needs to be used when using animations so that real world states are checked and displayed as well, when possible.

We always had pressure and flow transducers values displayed on the HMIs that allowed us to "see" whether there was indeed flow through a real pipe.
 
Hi, gents!

I'm just wondering if anyone works in process control industries and faces the same challenge. Customers want to have the pipe system animated. Namely they want pipes to be grey by default and then change to different colors depending if the product runs through, or CIP, or hot water, or watever. We normally use Citect or InTouch SCADAs and this kind of animation requires lots of manual scripting.
Does anyone know if there are any SCADAs out there that offer more natural solution?


We had the same problem some time ago. But now our
approach is to image a piping as a a net of the pipe links,
connected each other. Each link "knows" the state of the adjacent links and calculates its own color and animation behavior.
In case of valve, inlet or outlet this behavior also depends upon the value of the assosiated external tag.
The Net of the pipe links is automatically constructed during the drawing procedure by special NET component. This component in run time also generates events on changing the state of net.
Of course, for the large pipings the amount of work is big,
but not complex at all.
 
Cow Dung and "n lev" hit on it but it bears repeating. Animation usually shows the intended state of a component or system only--not the actual state if a failure occurs. This can lead to confusion by production types, and their response to that confusion could be to start pushing buttons. Caution needs to be used when using animations so that real world states are checked and displayed as well, when possible.

We always had pressure and flow transducers values displayed on the HMIs that allowed us to "see" whether there was indeed flow through a real pipe.

There is an idea which, probably, satisfy both points of view.
1. Make Coloring for the filled segments of a pictured pipeline
2. If the pipeline is open from its inlet to the end - show dashed line
along the whole path
3. If there is a Flow through the pipeline -
a) make an animation for the dashed line or (by choice of an operator)
b) make an animation for the small "inspection window" - as it is frequently made in the real pipelines
4. Cut the animation in case of an alarm for any device along
the pipeline
 
I agree that animating pipework is trivial, valves show the path of flow & messages show type of process, I have done pipe animation & it took quite a bit of code as you need cip bits, product bits along with the valve limits to animate or colour the pipework.
The trouble is the scada manufacturers demonstrate these very nice pictures like i think intouch did they created a 3D picture with 3D valves pumps & pipework the valves & pumps were actual pictures of the valves that had been animated.
It looked fantastic but will the end user pay for hundreds of hours to code such a project.
 
I also agree that 3d piping looks fantastic and it is very good for the presentation purposes.
But I spent hudreds of hours commissioning the piping Plants with my colleague from our mechanical
departament and he prefers the plain schematic presentation for the technological pipings.
As for Animation - it just should work as a path calculator. To faster understand what
is going on with the monitored equipment. Looking at an analog watch you more easy calculate
the time left, then reading digital watch. The same with the path along a pipeline.
It seems, there should be the way at glance understand the situation. And beautiful 3d pictures
do not help much.
 

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