Need suggestions for Conveyor Plant layout

I'm engaged in a project where I'm working on designing of conveyors.
The conveyor ranges from 10 meters to 25 meters long. I have to design
a plant layout where I will be using 5-6 conveyors. Now if I design
the complete conveyor system, the file become very heavy and there are
too many details which will have to be made just for plant layout
hence a time consuming job. At present the other people are using
AutoCAD for the same purpose. They use blocks to design the plant
layout which is not much time consuming. But the task what I have been
given is do the same in the 3D.

Now I need suggestions/ ideas from everyone. I'm thinking of designing
the full conveyor systems in single part using excels tables/
configurations and then call the different types of conveyors (made
individually as single part but with varying dimensions, means 1
single part for each type of conveyor) in the assembly and mate them
as per requirements.

What you suggest for the same.

Thanks & Regards


Deepak Gupta

 

I would save the (somewhat simplified) conveyor assy as a part, to be used
for plant layout. Much lighter to move around...
HIH
JM

 

We do a lot of this, and always using very simple models of the
conveyors and machines. I use to put in a texture on the belt itself
to give it a more realistic look. It doesnt take many minutes to draw
up a simple model of a conveyor so it's almost easier then to save the
whole assy as a part. To save detailed assys as parts can give quite
big files as well.

// Krister

 

Thanks Jean, Krister & John

Thanks for the suggestions.

Jean I feel saving Assy as a part will be helpful once but for making
any changes, I have to modify the part in the main assy and then again
save as part.
Krister if possible can u send me some file which you have made so
that i can have a look for better understanding.
John, never gave a thought on it. I feel it will be easy to handle the
final layout easily but not sure till I give it a try.


Thanks & Regards

Deepak Gupta

 

Hello Deepak;

I used to design Conveyor-based AMHS's (Automated Material Handling
Systems) for the semiconductor industry. In that type of system there
are very often thousands of modular components, with the total length
of conveyor measured in kilometers (I recall one layout that had over
5km). We typically recieved Autocad files from our customers with
their building and equipment plans. They always demanded that our
layout be provided to them in ACAD 2-d format, so thats how we did our
layouts. We used simple blocks to represent our components.

Similarly you might consider how your customer will view and use your
layouts.

If the customer doesn't care and the layout is for your own use only
(or if they actually require 3-d solid), then I would go with Jean
Marc's/Krister's suggestion. The issue of updating a simplified model
should not be a problem- if the models are (or configurable model is)
simple.

Anf if you think about it, the reason for putting effort into keeping
a simplified model completely up-to-date would be if the way it
interfaces to other system elements changes. Those interfaces should
be agreed upon early in the design, and if they are changing they
should be nailed down, so to speak, as early as possible. If a
conveyor designer changes an internal part that has no system-level
implications, I wouldn't see any reason to update a system-level
model. That would seem to me to be wasted effort. In other words, I
don't think you should need to update that often.

Regards,
-Dave Adams-

 

Hi Deepak

Our plant layouts can be pretty heavy with a lot of our own machines,
a lot or piping and additional conveyors from subcontractors. Normally
we try to photo render the whole thing and put it all into a PP-
presentation. Earlier we tried to save our own machine models as just
one part....but too many parts were visable so the file size increased
heavily. That took us back again to simple models, but with many
configuarations so it's easy to show different postitions of the
machines.I don't know what kind of conveyors You're dealing with, ours
are normally belts in various lengths and configurations. This layuot
is now up to 2200 components, even though most of it is just simple
copies from the real model. As John sais, a layout sketch in the main
assy to drive the base of the conveyor, could be an idea, I use that
way of working myself for our pipings, coz the customer tends to move
the machines around a little during the "build up phase". We do all
our preentations in 3D and also using a program called NavisWorks to
make a "walk-through" but also for rendering sometimes as SW
sometimtims has problems with renderiing such big files. I'll send
You a pdf from a later plant layout and a few rendered photos from an
earlier stage of the project.

// Krister