Pipe routing design and assembly planning technology in virtual environment

Pipe routing design and assembly planning for complicated products are time-consuming and difficult, and Virtual Reality (VR) technology provides engineers a new and efficiency way. Based on the analysis of pipeline´s characteristic, a pipe modeling method based on control points model in virtual environment is introduced, and the pipe are built though recognizing and organizing those control points. The process of pipeline layout was introduced. Some rules are applied in the process of pipeline layout. The outcome of the pipeline layout is used for pipe assembly simulation in virtual environment directly. The unreasonable outcome can be found earlier through pipe assembly simulation. This paper focuses on the key realization techniques of pipeline layout and assembly simulation in virtual environment, including digital model of pipeline, pipeline layout technique, real-time collision detection in the process of pipe assembly simulation. Eventually, a prototype is developed and has illustrated the feasibility of the proposed above methods and algorithms.