On a first reckoning, pipe design doesn’t seem like the most complicated of engineering challenges. Pipes come in standard sizes, they have matching bolt patterns for fastening lengths together and they’re built to be the quintessential standard product. They should just naturally work together and be as uncomplicated as possible—like Lego bricks. While that notion might be correct for a residential plumbing job, or maybe even an oil and gas pipeline (minus all of the pumps, compressors and pipeline-specific hardware), there are many instances in which pipe design can be extremely complex.
Take, for example, any chemical processing facility. If you’ve ever been down to the Texas coast, or past exit 10A on the New Jersey Turnpike, you’ll have seen what I mean. Towers shoot up hundreds of feet twisting in on themselves, then back around, lacing metal tube in ways too complex to comprehend.
To efficiently design a piping complex that channels so many fluids to different locations, automation is essential, and that’s what M4 ISO provides. With M4 ISO, designers only need to sketch and dimension the pipe geometries that they’ll need for a project. With a rough outline M4 ISO can be activated and 3D pipe geometry, bills of materials and other critical documents can be propagated immediately.
With machine and facility designing becoming ever more complex, automation shortcuts like M4 ISO will be invaluable to designers in the future. Now, if only M4 ISO could find the best routing paths for piping design, then that would truly be something!