Verification and visualization of equipment access on offshore platforms
Abstract
The Master s thesis discusses verification of equipment transport on offshore platforms.The goal of the thesis is to use the form finding method dynamic relaxationto create a software application, which helps the layout engineers to automaticallycheck whether an equipment transport route on offshore platforms is feasible usingdynamic relaxation. This could potentially save a lot of time and add valueby enabling the ability to run several iterations of the transport route with littleeffort. The thesis presents a new workflow, based on using the new application, anddiscusses advantages and disadvantages between the new and current workflow fortransport route verification.By using Autodesk Navisworks and its .NET and COM API, a plug-in applicationwas created for Navisworks, to automatically verify movement of an object througha given access way. This was done using Navisworks clash detective feature throughthe .NET API. The plug-in application required input parameter such as a validationobject, a boundary geometry and a path. The plug-in application is divided into twophases; one path optimizing phase, and one verification phase. The optimizing phaseis a pre-phase for the verification phase, to optimize run-time speed. The verificationphase uses dynamic relaxation to try to move the validation object through the givenpath. If the validation object clashes with the boundary geometry, the dynamicrelaxation will try to find a point of equilibrium where there is no clash.The plug-in application uses WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) as a presentationsystem in .NET, with the MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) architecture.The visualization of the validation object s movement, and the verification result, isdone via Navisworks .NET API, where the movement is presented in Navisworks own UI. The plug-in application s UI will present information about the status ofa verification. The UI gives the opportunity for the user to monitor the velocity,acceleration and applied force in the dynamic relaxation method during verificationusing chart controls.