A 2D Engineering Drawing and 3D Model Matching Algorithm for Process Plant
Rui Wen
School of Computer Science and
Engineering,
Nanjing University of Science and
Technology,
Nanjing, China;
wenruity@163.com
Weiqing Tang
Institute of Computing
Technology,
Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Beijing, China
Zhiyong Su
School of Automation,
Nanjing University of Science and
Technology,
Nanjing, China
Abstract—Process plant Computer-Aided Design
(CAD) models can be roughly divided into 3D models
and 2D engineering drawings. Matching calculation of
these CAD models not only contributes to their
coherency verification, but also benefits for the
development of model retrieval. However, in process
plant area, 3D models and 2D engineering drawings are
different in both graphical representations and content
structures, which leads to the inapplicability of current
shape-feature based 2D & 3D matching approaches. To
resolve this problem, a topological structure based
algorithm is proposed. Exploiting component as the
basic unit, we firstly transform 2D engineering drawings
and 3D models into attribute graphs. Then, by
introducing related researches of graph similarity, we
calculate attribute graph similarity to measure the
matching degree between their corresponding CAD
models. The proposed algorithm is translation, rotation
and similarity transformation consistent. Experimental
results demonstrate its effectiveness and feasibility.
Keywords- process plant; 3D model; 2D engineering
drawing; matching calculation; graph similarity
I. I
NTRODUCTION
Process plant Computer-Aided Design (CAD) models
are mainly divided into 3D models and 2D engineering
drawings. In engineering design stage, the graphical
representations of process plant CAD models are 3D
wireframes or entities. Once design is completed, their
graphical representations are various 2D engineering
drawings such as ISOmetric projection (ISO) drawing,
pipeline plane drawing, section drawing, etc., which then
serve as a clear and precise guidance for construction [1].
With the expanding investment in process plant, the
number of 3D models and 2D engineering drawings is
exploding, which brings out difficulties in the retrieval of
existing CAD models. A fast and effective model retrieval
technique is beneficial to model management and reuse,
which is of great significance for improving design
efficiency and ensuring design quality. However, due to
the difficulty of an accurate model text acquisition and
lacking of standardization, a file-name based model
retrieval system can no longer meet enterprise-level needs.
Comparatively, through directly exploiting models'
internal characteristics, content-based model retrieval
technique serves as a useful tool for effectively and
precisely locating existing models. On one hand, an
accurate matching calculation between 2D engineering
drawing and 3D model plays a crucial role in coherency
verification. On the other hand, retrieving the relevant 3D
model (or 2D engineering drawing) according to 2D
engineering drawing (or 3D model) also benefits the
management and reuse of CAD models. The key point in
tackling these problems lies in 2D engineering drawing
and 3D model matching algorithm.
Currently, existing 2D drawing and 3D model
matching researches are concentrated on general 3D
models [2] and product CAD models [3,4]. These
researches focus largely on the shape feature similarity
measurement and can be summarized into three steps [5]:
(1) Get a projection drawing of the 3D model under
the same viewpoint with the compared 2D drawing;
(2) Extract shape features of the 2D drawing and
projection drawing;
(3) Calculate the similarity between their 2D shape
features to measure the matching degree between the
compared 2D drawing and 3D model.
However, because different kinds of 2D engineering
drawings and 3D models derived from the same project
have differences in graphical representations and content
structures, shape-feature based approaches are
inapplicable in process plant CAD models. That is:
z The graphical representations of components are
determined by engineering design standards. For instance,
in 2D engineering drawings, a component's geometry is
not the direct projection of its real 3D shape, but the icon
conforming to engineering design standards [6];
z Some kinds of 2D engineering drawings are not
drawn proportionally. They only need to keep the original
topology intact, such as ISO drawing and Piping &
Instrumentation Diagram (P&ID);
z Different kinds of CAD models derived from
the same project may also vary in content structures. For
2015 International Conference on Virtual Reality and Visualization
978-1-4673-7673-0/15 $31.00 © 2015 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ICVRV.2015.13
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