A "line list" is a key coordination document that includes a short record of important information about those lines, or pipelines. Piping engineers, project engineers, and managers typically manage key information associated with piping systems using a report or document known as a line list. However, the actual definitions of the lines, information being managed, and the usage of line lists are non-standard. They are highly variable and configurable within or across business sectors, within or across owner/operators, contractors, and the business lifecycle.
Traditionally, in the more document-centric world, a line has been whatever connected set of piping elements the engineers have found convenient. Usually this consists of a continuously connected assembly of piping elements and components, for example all piping elements that share a fluid code and pipe sequence number.
A line may be branched, involving multiple legs/runs/headers/branches, and multiple from(s) and to(s), as well as multiple engineering properties (such as nominal sizes and piping specs) within the one "line". A typical, but by no means definitive, example of this from Smart P&ID is shown below. In this example, each label in black is a pipe run. The overall pipeline is S-172.
From a more data-centric perspective, it can appear necessary or desirable to manage the more granular uniquely-defined pipe runs consisting of fewer elements, with just one From, one To, one nominal size, one pipe spec, and so on. However, although the software applications manage the most granular piping elements with unique sets of significant properties, it is generally still required that piping engineering tasks are managed at higher levels of business granularity. This leads to configurability and flexibility of so-called "roll-up rules" described in more detail later.
This is not an arbitrary preference by piping engineers, but reflects the need to select a level of management granularity at which the fewest changes of line identity occur during the lifecycle of detailed design development because changes of identity are the most important and most difficult to manage at the business level.
The SmartPlant Foundation line lists functionality can be used in a number of ways within SmartPlant Enterprise, both stand-alone and integrated. When integrated, the line list functionality retrieves the piping data (typically from Smart P&ID), including the connected equipment and instrumentation, and generates the line list structure that reflects the rollup of the more granular line list segments (pipe runs). In integrated mode, a document containing updated line information can be issued and published back to the data warehouse for use in the enterprise.
When working in stand-alone mode, you can create line list records without the more granular line list segments. The line list can be managed as a document showing the line list records. This document can be issued and published back to the data warehouse for use in the enterprise as a project deliverable.