The innovative CAE system Planeds prepares I&C technology for industrial applications

 

In process engineering and plant construction, as in many other industries, achieving the highest quality within a short timeframe and at minimal costs is crucial. Results must be customized to meet specific individual customer needs. During the planning phase of the plants, numerous challenges arise due to these factors, including inefficiencies. Unfortunately, a commonly used approach of decentralized, fragmented, or disjointed documentation exacerbates these challenges rather than contributing to their resolution. 

In the era of Industry 4.0, Planeds can be utilized as a digital solution that addresses these challenges, enabling more efficient planning and, later on, even facilitating reliable operational management of process engineering facilities. 

Integrated system for an efficient planning phase

 

Our database-oriented CAE system, Planeds, for the I&C technology, tackles these and numerous other diverse challenges, ensuring planning that complies with international standards. Internationally renowned corporations and companies from the pharmaceutical and (petro)chemical industries are already among our clients. They benefit from personalized consultation, have the software development tailored to their own economic and technical circumstances, and rely on subsequent customer service – all services associated with the use of Planeds. 

Planeds provides users with a centralized data model where all information related to a plant is stored thematically. This eliminates the need to maintain redundant data for different planning stages (process engineering, instrumentation and control, infrastructure planning). Planeds thus consolidates all perspectives on a plant into a comprehensive database. 

Another advantage is the scalability of project-related planning and the adjustability of the quantity and structure of values to be entered by the user, which can be predefined by the operator. Moreover, changes can be implemented easily and directly, gradually refining an initial rough plan with more details. This ensures consistently high-quality results. 

In addition, a consistent and always up-to-date documentation including a revision system can be provided. Already captured information is accessible at any time and from anywhere. All project-related plans are thus fully and centrally integrated into the entire documentation. 

The integrated graphic system creates an exact and detailed representation of the desired facility, illustrating the operations or processes as well as the hierarchical relationship among the devices. This includes: 

Process flow diagram with equipment, machinery, pipelines, as well as automatically assigned process data and specific details. 

Schematic and circuit diagrams featuring a comprehensive symbol library conforming to international standards. 

Automatically generated job sheet from planning data

Layoutplan of rooms and field areas

Arrangement plans of cabinets and assembly racks

Single-line plan

Network overview

Hierarchical overview of equipment labeling in an object manager

The user-friendly graphical user interface provides easy navigation. Universal interfaces facilitate seamless data exchange between different tools. All changes can be easily tracked through the integrated versioning system. Furthermore, there is the option to digitally store and retrieve documents at all important areas and objects of the model. 

 

Interdepartmental and interdisciplinary World Wide Engineering 

 

An effective and proven rights management ensures that only individuals with permission have access to a project. This way, Planeds prevents unauthorized access and guarantees additional data security. Conversely, with the Planeds Explorer viewer, all authorized users have the opportunity to access an overview of the current status of planning via a tablet or smartphone. Current as well as past inventory documentations are available at any time, even if changes have already been planned and digitally implemented for the facility. Planeds thus paves the way for uncomplicated collaboration between different departments and teams located at local and international sites, without conflicting with each other. 

 

Planeds – Computer-aided plant design for optimal results

 

Planeds provides essential information to design and engineering teams as a CAE system, supporting them in plant planning and associated decision-making processes. Computer-assisted design can be applied across various sectors and industries to ensure centralized project planning, optimize product designs before construction, refine them later, and assist in solving technical challenges. 

 

Our Latest Version Planeds 5.3

 

We are excited to introduce the new version 5.3 of Planeds. This release focuses on "planning efficiency and speed". To achieve this, many functions in Planeds have been significantly revised and expanded. Here's a small preview of new ways of working:

 

Performance

The overall speed of Planeds was a key focus of this version. Major efficiency improvements were made at crucial points in the code, which have a wide-reaching impact across the application. As a result, for instance, folders now load in near real time.

 

Autoconnect and Connection Handling

A large part of planning work takes place within the function environment. That’s why we’ve specifically improved the handling of connections. Autoconnect, reassigning connections without deletion, and inline placements are now part of the standard feature set in the function environment.

 

Documentation Output

Handing over excerpts of the documentation in PDF or printed format is still an important part of the planning phase. We’ve addressed this as well by introducing a one-click documentation generation feature. All relevant documents – including external ones – are automatically compiled and written into a complete PDF file.

 

Curious to learn more? Then take a look at our release notes!

 

Planeds 5.3 Release Notes

 

Planeds Training

 

Discover the diversity of our products and benefit from customized training to deepen your knowledge. Visit our training page for more information.