TB 2025-06-13

Context

Introduction

When defining flanged connection in the Pipign 3D model you can decide to represent them without or with the Gasket and bolts.

If you represent the gasket and bolts, the objective is to be able to manage them automatically as much as possible. So let's see what are the best ways to define your flanges to take benefit of all the Piping 3D applications functionnalities like :

part placement (manual)
automatic part placement
automatic spool split

Bolt management

In this practice we will propose to define the bolt as a piping Miscelaneous part that repesent a predefined bolt set (and not individual bolt). We will use the description attribute to store the bolt number. (this information will be used in report knowledge template to extract the total bolt number)

The Bolt set will be instantiated , meaning that every botset is invarient , it represent a given solution that is based on flange size/rating/material/endstyle

Note : It is possible to adjust the methodology to be able to have user parameter to adjust bolt set configuration after placement. but in this case the component must have the attribut "instanciation rules" = "New Reference" or "Reuse or New reference" depending of the need . (see dedicated chapter concerning "instanciation rule" attibute

Part definition

overview

Details

there is 2 topics to manage beside this topic of flanged connection

how do we manage gasket thickness and part ports
how do we manage port endstyle to allow automatic part placment and automatic spooling

How do we manage gasket thickness ?

Do we represent and take into acount the gasket thickness ?

in the above picture we take it into account for RAISED FACE and we consider it as 0mm for RING JOIN

How do we define the Port position (on flange, gasket and bolt if we manage the gasket in 3D

if we have multiple possible gasket for a given flange reference , then we will use Case1
1. the gasket thickness will be reported also in the bolt set part

if we have a single gasket ref solution for a given Flange reference, then we will use Case2
1. the gasket thickness will be reported also in the Flange part

How do we manage port endstyle to allow automatic part placment and automatic spooling ?

GASKET EndStyles :

to ensure that the good gasket is placed we recommand to have dedicated EndStyle for gasket.

value naming convention "GASKET" +

Usually the gasket can be place in any orientation (left/right side).Or the orientation does't influence the 3D model or the spool split. in this case the 2 port of the Gasket will have the same value

BOLT EndStyle :

the 2 ports of the Bolt set willl have 2 different values of end style for 2 reasons

to orient the part correctly ; if the gasket thickness is reported on the bolt --> then the part is no more symetrical and the bolt set must be placed with the good orientation. this means that we must define which port will be connected to the gasket and with one the the other flange
- we will use similar naming convention as for the gasket + additional code for the side:
- "BOLTED" + + "-" + = BOLTED RF-FL (flange side) or BOLTED RF-GA (gasket side)
to split the pipe line in spool correctly : having 2 different ed style will give more flexibility to define the Spooling rule and to decide to include the Gasket and the Bolt set toghether into the same spool

SUM UP

Engineering Specification rules

Compatibility rule on EndStyle

Define EndStyle compatibility between Flange/Gasket/Bolt endstyles.

This will allows to filter & orient the part correctly when placing them individually manually

Automatic Part Placement Rule

Exemple of automatic part rule to place automatically a gasket + bolt set + a flange Raised face between a "RAISED FACE" port and a BUTT WELD Port

Note in this case , it is the component with RAISE FACE endstyle that will stay at it initial position and the component with the BUTT WELD endstyle that will be moved to insert the intermediate needed compoenents

Automatic Spool rule

Principal : when system is navigating through the pipe line network, he is adding to the curent spool the Flange, the gasket and when arriving on the bolt Set, if the port is "BOLTED RF-GA" the part is added to the spool , when it arrive on the "BOLTED RF-FL" port ;, spool is stopped and then restart a new spool and add the next flange ...

Data set

the following 3DXML contains a the above set of data needed to do some tests

Piping Specification with
- the reference dimension table for flanged connection
- the automatic part rule table
- and part filter
catalog with the flange, gasket, bolt set and weld