Piping layout wizard: Basic concepts and its potential for pipe route planning

Abstract

The paper proposes a search method for pipe route planning using genetic algorithm incorporated with several heuristics. First, the basic principle of our method is presented using key ideas which include representation of pipe route for GA operations, spatial potential energy to cover design scenarios, fitness function, basic GA operations, coordinates conversion procedure, and route modification procedure using subgoal setting. In order to apply the method to actual problems and to solve them in a practical manner, the study employs various heuristics, which are concept of direction, generation of initial individuals using intermediate point, extended two-points crossover, and dynamic selection. Those heuristics are also described and their effectiveness in our method is discussed. Then, the paper shows a prototype system, or Piping Layout Wizard, which were developed based on our approach and discusses the validity of the proposed method.