ISOtracer can greatly reduce the effort required to build a 3-D piping model from a collection of isometric drawings. However, when you needed to include supporting steel structures, you had to add those after exporting the ISOtracer model to an analysis application like BOSfluids. This situation is less than ideal as the ISOtracer model could no longer be viewed as the authoritative model. In addition to that, adding structural supporting structures can take quite some effort, depending on the analysis application that is used.
The upcoming ISOtracer release improves the situation substantially by making it possible to add beam elements to a piping model. This means that you can now model both the piping and the supporting steel structures in ISOtracer. Modeling a steel structure involves the selection of the appropriate beam-type when starting a new element chain. After that, you can add beam elements in the same way that you would add pipe elements. ISOtracer supports the common beam cross-sections, as well as a custom beam type. The latter requires you to explicitly specify the relevant mechanical properties of the beam.
In addition to supporting beam elements, the upcoming ISOtracer release also improves support for modeling tee junctions. You can now specify both the type and the relevant geometry parameters associated with tee junctions. This, again, reduces the number of changes that you need to apply to a piping model after it has been exported from ISOtracer to an analysis application.
These changes make ISOtracer an even more effective tool for building piping models as there is less need to adjust a model after it has been exported to an analysis application. This not only saves more time but also further reduces the scope for errors.
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