Piping and structural component design and fabrication system
AssigneeQuickpen International Corp.
InventorsAllen Holman, Curtis Broughton
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A system including a method for designing and fabricating piping and structural components for a piping network. A CAD (computer assisted design) system is initially employed to generate one or more pipe drawings and associated data for the piping network after which the information is stored in a memory of CAD system. Thereafter, the pipe drawings and associated data information is automatically retrieved by a second computer for a fabrication unit. Based on the pipe drawings and associated data, the fabrication unit selects one or more pieces of piping and other raw materials needed for the fabrication; and thereafter fabricates from the raw materials, the piping and structural components for the piping network.
Claims18
A method for designing and fabricating piping and structural components for a piping network, the method comprising:
- providing a computer system that has a first and a second computing device;
- generating one or more pipe drawings and associated data for the piping network with the computer system
- storing the pipe drawings and associated data in a memory of the first computing device for later retrieval;
- selecting the pipe drawings and automatically retrieving the associated data to a second memory of the second computing device;
- based on the pipe drawings and associated data, selecting one or more pieces of piping and other raw materials needed for the fabrication;
- and
- fabricating from the raw materials, the piping and structural components for the piping network.
A system for designing and fabricating piping and structural components, the system comprising:
- a design computing device for preparing drawings and associated data for one or more piping and structural components, said drawings being capable of being stored in memory of the design computing device;
- and
- a fabrication unit further comprising a fabrication computing device and a cutter;
- wherein in response to a request from said fabrication computing device, the design computing device automatically forwarding said drawings and associated data to the fabrication computing device;
- wherein the fabrication unit being such that upon receiving said drawings, raw materials are loaded onto the fabrication unit;
- and
- wherein the cutter automatically cutting the raw materials received in accordance with said drawings and associated data.
A computing user interface for transferring piping fabrication information to a fabrication unit, the user interface comprising:
- one or more software instructions for accepting user selection of one or more pipe drawing files, the pipe drawing file being generated by a computer aided design software;
- one or more software instructions for displaying one or more spool files associated with the pipe drawing files;
- one or more software instructions for accepting user selection of one or more of the spool files;
- and
- one or more software instructions for retrieving the spool files selected into the fabrication unit for fabrication.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.