A matching method of the piping design information using anchor nodes

Abstract

As digital transformation accelerates, the shipbuilding industry has shown growing interest in digital twins that link physical assets to digital models. Building a ship digital twin requires a piping digital model that integrates piping design information generated progressively during design; however, connecting information between the 2D piping model (e.g., P&ID drawing) and the 3D piping model remains difficult because they are created with different tools at different stages. Although approaches that transition to a unified common model framework from the early design stages have been proposed, they require a comprehensive overhaul of the existing design process and limit the reuse of accumulated design data. A method for post-hoc integration of information between two models created under the current workflow is thus needed. This paper presents a matching method for piping design information between 2D and 3D piping models using anchor nodes. The piping design information of both models was represented as a common piping graph model. And valves, equipment, and orifices—identifiable by their unique names—were represented as anchor nodes, reducing the matching problem between the two different piping models to a subgraph search at the piping model section level, which can be obtained by partitioning by these anchor nodes. The method was applied to test data and industrial data. For closed sections whose boundaries consist solely of anchor nodes, 100% matching accuracy was achieved on the test data. The sections that failed to match in the industrial data were attributable to actual design discrepancies between the 2D and 3D piping models, indicating that the method can also serve as a tool for detecting design errors between different piping models. These results confirm the feasibility of constructing a ship piping digital model while maintaining the existing design process. The proposed method is expected to help link the ship piping digital model to construction within current design workflows.