Automatic Inspection of As-Built Piping System for Design Consistency

As the exploration for resources moving deeper into the oceans, lifetime and complexity of offshore plants increases, effective management of the plants require high precision built consistent CAD models. This paper presents a new algorithm to automatically detect as-built position of pipes, flanges and elbows which can be extended to tee junction, corresponding to their as-designed models. These positions can be used to modify the CAD model or the construction depending on the difference in as-designed and as-built positions. The algorithm uses Laser Scanned Point Cloud for as-built information and CAD model for the as-designed. The algorithms are implemented based on Point Cloud Library (PCL) and verified with industrial data.