Pipeline alignment sheet which is basically a blueprint showing the route including the other existing features and virtually all the engineering that was done during the design phase is a key integral of the pipeline design and construction. It is probably the best asset that a pipeline owner can have for the successful completion of a pipeline project. However, the generation of extremely good quality automated alignment sheets received increased attention in recent years due to the increased errors while done manually. The use of Geographic Information System (GIS) in managing pipeline database and automating routine engineering processes has become a standard practice in the pipeline industry. While maintaining a central database provides security, integrity, and easy management of data throughout the pipeline’s lifecycle, GIS enables a spatial analysis of pipeline data in addition to streamlining access and visualization of results for clients. One of the major benefits of GIS integration lies in the ease of automating the alignment sheet generation for pipelines. However, the existing 3^rd^-party software packages generally provide the outputs in native software format, instead of the much-preferred Computer-Aided Design (CAD) format. In other words, organizations that prepared the data to adopt pre-defined commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) designs and have little or no control over the design/customization of the alignment sheet’s layout. Therefore, a detail investigation is required for the proper integration of GIS and CAD to produce high quality pipeline alignment sheets. This paper introduces a simplified sheet generation workflow that seamlessly blends GIS routines to produce highly-customizable alignment sheets in AutoCAD. The design philosophy is based on (i) separating the processing task from the design task, (ii) giving full control—over the layout—to the data creator/preparer, and (iii) producing state-of-the-art CAD drawings while maximizing the inherent capabilities of the GIS (geo-processing) and AutoCAD (drafting/design) environments. By weaving existing GIS/CAD algorithms and methods to generate the alignment sheet, writing new geoprocessing or drawing algorithms become unnecessary, which in turn minimizes the risks and probabilities of committing any systematic errors arising from newly-untested code. The paper also conducts a parametric study to show the efficiency of the workflow through practical design examples. This is a robust and cost-effective workflow that can easily be adopted by teaming up the GIS and CAD departments/counterparts.


Streamlining the Gis to Cad Workflow for Automated Pipeline Alignment Sheet Generation

Division / Sponsors: 
Pipeline Systems Division

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IPC/IPC2020/volume/84447

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