Bentley AutoPIPE

Integration for a complete workflow

Not just a single solution, Bentley AutoPIPE is instead part of a comprehensive portfolio of  CAD, CAE, and structural engineering software from Bentley. Bentley AutoPIPE integrates with CAD, STAAD, and ProjectWise to provide a complete analysis, design, and documentation workflow solution. No matter what type of project you have, Bentley has the most productive software tools available, with the highest level of interoperability available, including all major 3D CAD systems like AutoPLANT, PlantSpace, Intergraph PDS, and Aveva PDMS.

Now the only solution on the market today with tight integration between piping and structural analysis, Bentley AutoPIPE can automatically transfer pipe support loads as well as import complete structures to and from STAAD.Pro, saving weeks of design time and providing safer, more realistic engineered designs.

Anyone on a project team for the first time in Bentley Navigator can view a detailed piping or structural analysis model complete with all the modeling and result data alongside the "real-time" 3D CAD model in order to make early design decisions and avoid costly mistakes. Using ProjectWise collaboration servers, distributed engineering is now possible with remote teams around the world.

State-of-the art modeling and analysis

Do you have difficulty correlating your model data with your piping system? Enjoy the power of bi-directionally synchronized Excel style spreadsheets with a graphical plot. Changes in either plot or grid are updated in real time. Like Excel, you can hide columns, easily make global changes across multiple cells or columns; you can uniquely sort any column to quickly find differences in the data or create customized printouts of any grid to PDF format. 

Bentley AutoPIPE also offers graphical copy and paste functionality for quick modeling and the ability to deal with changes in a timely manner.

Bentley AutoPIPE has an advanced non-linear engine developed by Prof. Emeritus (UC Berkeley) to perform load sequencing not found in other programs. It also includes built-in wave loading, industry recognized buried pipeline analysis, dynamic loadings, and orthotropic FRP/GRP piping analysis; thermal bowing of hot partially filled pipes, pipe/structure interaction, fluid transient with closure time, and relief valve utilities, non-linear support gaps and friction and jacketed piping.

Intuitive GUI modeling

AutoPIPE offers an always present graphical user interface that enables the user to dynamically input graphically for faster modeling and modifications. Our one screen CAD-like graphical environment is the most intuitive in the industry, with 3D OpenGL rendering and smart component graphics for realistic animation and visualization.

Intelligent object technology

No other pipe stress program can offer the intelligent object technology for faster modeling to build complex models in seconds or share pipe support layouts with other engineers on the project. Object technology allows the user to graphically select components or pipeline segments to apply loadings, soil, or different types of data in one easy operation without entering the data for each element one by one.

Comprehensive design codes

Now used in 55 countries for the last 20 years, Bentley AutoPIPE has maintained the latest codes and features of 24 international piping codes and standards for ASME, British, European, German, Japanese, Chinese, API, NEMA, ANSI, ASCE, AISC, UBC, and WRC.  Previous code years are supported for power and nuclear plant retrofits and more than 20 pipe support spring manufacturers from the United States to United Kingdom, Spain, India, Japan and China.

Developed as a scalable solution to meet the needs of companies working in industries like nuclear and fossil power, process and chemical plants, offshore FPSO platform and riser design, fire protection systems, oil refineries, cross-country gas and oil pipelines, FRP piping, and building services piping.

Highest quality standards

• Does your company receive patches every few months to fix bugs and reliability issues with the piping analysis software you are currently running?
• Does your current software supplier provide a full publishable list of defects in the program complete with solutions or workarounds on their website or discussion forum?
• Do you feel you are the software tester having to report problems with the program?

AutoPIPE is the only pipe stress analysis software on the market that adheres to the strictest external quality standards, including ISO 9001, 10CFR21, NQA-1 and the nuclear approvals by NUPIC and NRC customers. This requirement will be mandatory in the near future.

ANSYS and AutoPIPE are the two leading approved analysis software programs by NUPIC for Nuclear Plant Utilities in the United States. And now with the integration of the leading nuclear ADLPipe solution, we will provide the most comprehensive nuclear piping solution on the market.

Every year, we are audited by NUPIC and companies like American Electric Power, Amergen, Constellation Energy, Florida Light & Power, and Westinghouse Savannah River who exhaustively review our Quality Assurance (QA) procedures. Our Bentley SELECT users have access to our online QA verification and validation test cases (Acceptance Test Set) and Bentley QA&R subscribers have additional access to our defect database. We accept that there are sometimes bugs in any software program, so we spend thousands of manhours of testing to minimize the extent and severity of these bugs. This provides engineers the confidence to use our software for safe engineering designs.

Easy to learn and use

Users have commented on how easily they could learn to model and find solutions with Bentley AutoPIPE. A recent survey told us that at least 80 percent of our customers were building and analyzing piping models within two hours following the step-by-step on-screen interactive tutorials.

With over 60 step-by-step movie tutorials and PDFs tutorial covering modeling, analysis, and post processing areas of the program, even a novice computer user can become productive in a matter of days. We also include extensive online help documentation that provides examples, and modeling techniques of real piping components along with explanations of hundreds of topics. In addition, we offer a certified training program as well as on-site and in-house trainings.

Interoperability with CAESAR II

AutoPIPE can read and write CAESAR II files.

Are your contractors or clients using Caesar II? Perform productive pipe stress work using Bentley AutoPIPE and exchange data with confidence.

Automatic stress isometrics

Generate intelligent customized stress isometrics. Create a fully dimensioned isometric for the complete model or selected range. Customize metric or english drawing sizes, viewing angles, north arrow, margins, and overflow. Choose to annotate the plot with engineers comments for the CAD designer or contractor and add support tags or reference equipment like pumps or steelwork. Place customized data tables for piping, flange, and valve data or summary result tables for maximum support loads, spring hanger report for procurement and stress summary.