Piping Route Path Planning Using Genetic Algorithm

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>With the increasing diversity of personal preferences for products, the conventional style of design using a series of consecutive procedures is inadequate to create designs that satisfy those preferences under the frequent changes of requirements in design specifications. Under these circumstances, conceptual design plays a key role to comply with those preferences and requirements, and to shorten the lead time in product development. This is also true in the domain of piping layout design, where a designer makes design in a trial-and-error way to comply with the requirements frequently changed in specification until the final design is formulated.</jats:p> <jats:p>The paper describes an approach of piping route path planning using genetic algorithm (GA). Optimization technique of GA generates a preliminary route path through evolution of genes which represent the piping route path. A designer evaluates the route path, modifies it, and repeats the procedure until the appropriate path is designed. In this way, a designer can interactively proceed the layout of piping in a collaborative manner using a design support system. The paper shows the procedure of the method and some results of simulation.</jats:p>