Support Designer's tools

Support Designer provides tools for managing location plans and supports.

Location plans

Supports must always be assigned to a location plan. A location plan defines the extents of a 3D box in the model area, and you can divide the model area into as many location plans as you like, depending on how you want to manage supports in different locations. A designer who is creating a new support must first select its general location by choosing a location plan for it, and the created support must fit inside the extents of the chosen location plan or the creation fails. Each support can only be assigned to a single location plan at a time, but supports can be moved from one location plan to another.

In the Support Designer: Location Plans dialog, you can add, modify and remove location plans, and access the supports of a given location plan.

To open this dialog, select Support > Location plans on any of the following tabs: Piping, Ducting, or Cabling.

On the left side of the dialog you see a list of all location plans defined in the project. For each location plan, the list displays the name, the valid COS operations, and the number of supports it contains.

On the right side of the dialog are the tools for managing location plans.

Location plan tools

In the Support Designer: Location Plans dialog, select a location plan from the location plan list to manage it with the following tools.

Button

Description

New

Starts the process of creating a new location plan. See Creating location plans.

Delete

Deletes the selected location plan. Only location plans that do not have supports can be deleted.

Attributes

Opens the Edit Attributes dialog for assigning attributes to the Location Plan group object. See Attributes.

Set Extent

Opens the Set Properties of View… dialog for adjusting the extents of the location plan in the 3D model. The supports must be completely inside this 3D box. See View properties.

Reassign

Starts the process of moving supports from one location plan to another.

Check

Allows you to run a validity check for the selected or all location plans.

If the validity check found errors, a report opens as a text file. The report indicates, for example, if a support construction has no primary or secondary supports or if a support is not inside the designated location plan.

Opens a dialog for managing pipe supports. See Pipe, duct, and cable tray supports.

Opens a dialog for managing cable tray supports. See Pipe, duct, and cable tray supports.

Opens a dialog for managing air duct supports. See Pipe, duct, and cable tray supports.

Use Location Plan View

When selected, a browser view opens showing the 3D content of all supports that are currently assigned to the selected location plan. The name of the location plan is shown in the center of the set of 3D objects in all open 3D views.

Manage COS Status

Opens the Manage Location Plan COS Status dialog where you can check in/check out and request/relinquish the ownership of location plans and the related objects. See Managing the COS status of location plans and supports.

Save

Opens the Save dialog for saving the changes locally or in COS. See Saving the area model.

Pipe, duct, and cable tray supports

You can use the Support Designer to create supports for pipes, cable trays, and air ducts. You can add, modify, and remove standard supports and custom supports, and manage the drawings of custom supports.

The design tools are used in the same way in all three disciplines, but the user interface is specific to each discipline, as indicated by the name of the dialog: Pipe Supports, Duct Supports or Cable Tray Supports.

Note: In this documentation we describe the common aspects of all three variants by referring to them as "the Supports dialog".

To open the Pipe Supports dialog, do one of the following:

  • On the Piping tab, click the Support button or select Support > Pipe supports.

  • In the Support Designer: Location Plans dialog, select a location plan and click the pipe button.

To open the Duct Supports dialog, do one of the following:

  • On the Ducting tab, click the Support button or select Support > Duct supports.

  • In the Support Designer: Location Plans dialog, select a location plan and click the air duct button.

To open the Cable Tray Supports dialog, do one of the following:

  • On the Cabling tab, click the Support button or select Support > Cable tray supports.

  • In the Support Designer: Location Plans dialog, select a location plan and click the cable tray button.

On the left side of the dialog you can see the supports of the selected location plan.

The columns of the list pane are:

Column

Description

Name

Displays the COS status and the name (unique ID) of the support group.

Type

Displays "Standard" for a standard support and "Custom" for a custom support.

Standard/Drawing

For a standard support, displays the value of the field "Drawing or standard" in the support template, as defined in the project configuration.

For a custom support, displays the user-defined support drawing number.

Valid Status Changes

Displays which COS status changes are possible for the support group at the moment.

Primaries

Displays the number of objects currently assigned to the primary support group.

Secondaries

Displays the number of objects currently assigned to the secondary support group.

On the right side of the dialog are the tools for managing supports.

Support tools

In the Supports dialog of the given discipline, you can use the following tools.

  • Tools for managing the support constructions:

    Button

    Description

    New

    Allows creating a new standard or custom support. See Creating supports.

    Delete

    Opens a dialog for selecting whether to delete both the support group and the 3D objects (including objects created outside Support Designer) or just the support group or the 3D objects.

    Rename

    Allows changing the position ID of the support construction.

    Copy

    Allows creating one or more copies of the selected support.

    For more information, see Creating supports by copying.

    Attributes

    Allows assigning attributes to the selected support construction (to its support group object).

    Collisions

    Allows detecting and browsing collisions related to support constructions.

    See Collision checking for supports.

    To Custom

    Allows converting a standard support to a custom support. This can be useful, for example, when you have started to design a standard support but then realize that new profiles need to be added to it.

    Properties

    Lists the basic properties of the selected support.

    Select in 3D

    Allows selecting the support list item via picking an object which is a member in one of the listed support groups.

  • Tools for managing the primary and secondary parts of support constructions:

    Button/Option

    Description

    Support Wizard

    		Opens a tool for creating the primary and secondary parts for a new pipe support construction. In simple cases, this is all that is needed to model a support. See Creating primary and secondary supports with support wizards.
    Primary

    Construct

    Opens a tool for creating and manipulating primary support objects. See Creating primary supports for pipes and Creating primary supports for ducts.

    LICAD

    Opens a dialog for managing integration with the LISEGA LICAD software. See Using the Support Designer with LISEGA LICAD.

    Assign

    Allows assigning model objects to the primary support group. This can be, for example, a pipe clamp created outside Support Designer.

    De-assign

    Removes selected objects from the primary support group.

    Attributes

    Allows assigning attributes to the primary support group.

    Note: LISEGA attributes are displayed but cannot be edited here. For information on editing LISEGA attributes, see Editing the attributes of LISEGA supports.
    Secondary

    Construct

    Creates the model for the secondary support. See Creating secondary supports.

    Assign

    Allows assigning model objects to the secondary support group. This can be, for example, a steel structure created outside Support Designer.

    De-assign

    Removes selected objects from the secondary support group.

    Fastening Materials

    Allows adding fastening materials like bolts and nuts to the secondary support group. See Managing the fastening materials of supports.

  • Tools for managing the support drawings of custom supports:

    • If the custom support has no drawing yet:

    • If the custom support has a drawing:

    Button/Option

    Description

    Create / Edit

    If the support drawing has not been created yet, the Create button starts a guided process where you create the drawing and then it opens for editing in the Document editor.

    If the support drawing already exists, the Edit button opens the drawing for editing.

    Autolabel

    Starts a guided process for generating and assigning part numbers to the objects in the BOM and generating part number labels to the primary and secondary supports in the drawing views.

    Manage

    Opens the Manage Drawings dialog of Plant Modeller.

  • Miscellaneous tools:

    Button/Option

    Description

    Use Support View

    If selected, the selected support is shown in a separate view.

    The support objects are shown in X-ray mode, and the neighboring objects are shown as transparent. The view is a normal, shaded work view that can be freely rotated. The support ID is displayed as an overlay text at the center of the support in all open work views.

    Check collisions

    If selected, supports are automatically checked for collisions.

    You can clear the option if the automatic testing is impacting your ability to work and you would rather run the collision tests at a more convenient time.

    For more details, see Collision checking for supports.

    Undo

    Select to undo the latest action.*

    Redo

    Select to redo the latest action.*

    Manage COS Status

    Opens the Manage COS Status dialog. See Managing the COS status of location plans and supports.

    Save

    Opens the Save dialog for saving the changes, both locally and to COS.*

    * About Undo/Redo

    • Undo/redo actions do not apply to drawings. A custom support may have a custom drawing that is associated to the support via its name. If you delete a custom support that has an associated support drawing, then also the drawing gets deleted. If you then undo the deletion, the support (that is, the support group and its contents) is restored but the drawing is not.

    • Save resets the undo/redo buffer and disables the Undo and Redo buttons.

    • Construct secondary implements its own internal undo/redo functionality.

Construct secondary

In the Supports dialog, the Construct button in the Secondary section opens the Construct Secondary dialog where you can add, modify, and remove secondary supports.

The dialog contains the following tools.

Templates

You can construct a secondary support using a ready-made template defined by the project administrator.

Button/Option

Description

Template

Select whether to use a Standard or Custom template.

Create

Allows creating a secondary support.

For an example, see Creating secondary supports.

Delete

Deletes the secondary support.

Move

Allows moving a secondary support.

Rotate

Allows rotating a secondary support.

Beams

You can construct a secondary support by using beam insertion and modification tools.

For more information on these tools, see Beam.

New Objects

You can insert new objects to a secondary support from the library or project database.

Button/Option

Description

Plate

Select to insert a plate as a Standard Component to the secondary support.

Equipment

Select to insert a piece of Equipment to the secondary support.

Structural

Select to insert a Structural to the secondary support.

Std Component

Select to insert a Standard Component to the secondary support.

Primaries

You can edit primary supports so that they align with the secondary support.

Button/Option

Description

Slide

Select to slide a primary support object along the pipe run.

Change Orientation

Select to change the orientation of a primary support object.

Instance Parameters

Select to edit the instance parameters of a primary support object.

Common Tools

The Construct Secondary dialog always shows these tools, regardless of which tab is selected.

Button/Option

Description

Set Ops

Opens the Set Operations dialog. See Set Operation Tool.

View Tool

Allows changing the properties of a selected view. See View properties.

Query

Opens the Object properties dialog.

Measure

Opens the Measure tool. See Measure.

Undo / Redo

Undo / redo the latest action.