ICI Mond (Design Systems Group)
ICI used the Plant Design Management System (PDMS) to help in the computer aided design of its chemical plants.
My role was to develop an Automatic Pipe-Routing module as an add-on. Given the 3-dimensional representation of the storage and reaction vessels, and all of the infrastructure stored in the model, the task was to find the least-cost route for pipes to connect vessels across the plant.
I developed code to explore feasible routes, assessing the cost based on the number of bends and whether or not any pipe-trunking was used. Collision detection was used to avoid existing plant.