Pipe animation

n_lev

Member
Join Date
Oct 2006
Location
Melbourne
Posts
105
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?
 
I do this on all my batching/mixing type systems using Intouch and it's really not that difficult. Instead of doing color changes, I use visibility of a small 'flow' line within a 3-D pipe. Makes it more attractive than a pipe's entire color fill changing. Using the horizontal/vertical line draw and duplicates, I can quickly animate process flow through piping. I'm not sure how much time could be saved through any alternate process.
 
How do you control visibility? Internal InTouch tags and scripts to change their values based on valve positions?
 
Not sure what you mean by 'internal tags', but in effect, I use I/O tags of valve positions, pump status, etc. to determine visibility in the line animation. A simple "VALVEA_OPEN AND PUMPA_RUN" in the visibility attribute.
 
I see... How big are those pictures you have to animate?
It's just that we have around 20-30 pictures with about 20 valves and 5 pumps per picture. So there MANY possible combinations and writing scripts will take FOREVER
 
Nothing that big....You're saying you have 600 Valves to animate? That's going to take some time no matter what method you use. The tedious part is of course applying progressive logic the further you go downstream. Whereas the first visualization is VALVEA_Open, the second may be VALVEA_Open AND VALVEB_Open, the third VALVEA_Open and VALVEB_Open and VALVEC_Open and so forth, and if you have 30 valves per process at even 5 deep you have your work cut out for you. Especially if you have to allow for multiple paths (ORs).
 
That's exactly my problem with using method like yours. Too meny combinations... :-(
And since process control industry is very big and pipe animation seems to become more and more common requirement I thought maybe there is a better solution
 
Using Citect I would create my own Symbols (bitmaps) and place them over the pipes. Arrows of various colours pointing in different directions should do.
If the expressions required to display them are too complex then consider using local tags (MemPLC) and set them up in Cicode functions. Alternately have PLC tags that are set up in the PLC with all the required logic to make their display simple.
 
If you have a lot of common pipe / valve structures you could use Citect Genies / Super Genies to reduce the manual set up. Otherwise, you have to rely on a careful disciplined set up to produce an error free result.
 
John Gaunt said:
If you have a lot of common pipe / valve structures you could use Citect Genies / Super Genies to reduce the manual set up. Otherwise, you have to rely on a careful disciplined set up to produce an error free result.
Unfortunately this is the case. Lots of manual work...
That's exactly why I think there might be some sort of better solution in the industry
 
I use the method already mentioned. Use the PLC to generate a register value and then use this for the animation. This is better than scripting because it is easier to debug

0= No Flow
1= Cold Flow
2= Hot Flow

etc

There is never a shortcut apart from making your own template for future use, if you have similar systems.

Cheers
 
National Instruments' Lookout product (and its little brother LookoutDirect from AutomationDirect) includes an 'object' called, what else, PIPE, which is made just for this purpose. I haven't done anything with the program for awhile but IIRC, there are eight possible colors allowed - you specify the arguments which control the colors.

.02
 
Unfortunately this is the case. Lots of manual work...
That's exactly why I think there might be some sort of better solution in the industry

Exactly. I just got done with some pipe animation with iFix & RSLogix. The system is huge: we animate every valve, pipe, tank fill level, VFD, etc... 2000 rungs of code.

Fortunatley everything was in an array so it was a lot of copy and pasting, and modifing the reference element.

What would be nice is a small program or plug-in that could mesh with the various HMI/SCADA packages, made exclusively for pipe animation, that allowed some way to organize, track, edit, and use progressive logic from either the HMI database or PLC side.
 
My personal opinion...

Animating flow paths in any non-trivial system is a big waste of time and money. It adds very little in terms of function or ease of use. The logic required to animate a complex piping system can quickly exceed the logic required to control that system. Expansions and modifications can put you in a situation where 80%+ of the cost of an update is rewriting the pipe animation. When you put it in those terms, who in their right mind would pay for it?

I can see where an OEM with a system that never gets changed could afford it. They get a lot of re-use out of software development. But if the guy paying the bills gets to see the costs associated with building and maintaining a system with and without pipe animations I think he's going to be a whole lot less impressed with those pretty pictures.
 

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