AUTOMATIC FLOWSHEET DRAWING FOR THE COMPUTER-AIDED DESIGN OF CHEMICAL PROCESSES USING INTERACTIVE COMPUTER GRAPHICS

A proposal is made for a new system for the computer aided design of chemical processes. Distinguishing this system would be its orientation toward fast, effective interaction between the engineer and the computer.;A prototype system was built to demonstrate the feasibility of using automatic flowsheet drawing in a computer aided design system. Complete listings are presented.;To be effective, the proposed system must be able to automatically (and artistically) layout and draw a flowsheet given the process units and their interconnections. This problem was formalized and algorithims were developed for its solution. The basic requirement set for the flowsheet is that it be drawn in a planar fashion (without stream crossings). This is achieved by modeling the flowsheet with an abstract graph, deriving information about a planar representation for that graph, and using the information gained to construct a planar flowsheet.