DESIGNING HEAT EXCHANGER IN CATIA V5

WHAT IS CATIA ?

CATIA stands for Computer Aided Three Dimensional Interactive Application. This software was released by Dassaults systemes in 1997. Basically this software was built to design a fighter plane. This software is used for designing, analyzing, simulation and for manufacturing products. It is used in various industries like aerospace, industrial machinery, automotive, etc. This software is quite complicated then Solidworks. 

Some key points for CATIA;

1. Settings and options are global to your session.
2. CATPart extension is created when making a CATIA model.
3. The file types you have available is dependent on the licence you have installed.
4. Control (Ctrl) key is used to select multiple elements.
5. Chevrons indicate that the toolbars are larger then the available screen size.

STEPS

To design a Heat Exchanger or any equipment like boiler, compressor, distillation column, etc, one should know the basic steps involved in 3D designing. The basic steps for designing any model in CATIA are sketching, Assembling and Drafting. So lets discuss each step w.r.t Heat Exchanger. One can design any model by following these simple steps.

• PART DESIGN WORK FLOW 

 Basically Part design work flow is consist of sketching a solid. We do this by selecting a plane (xy, yz, xz). Once the plane is selected then these steps are followed;

1. create a solid
2. make a solid 
3. dressing up the solid

To make a perfect solid one should know how to operate toolbar and what toolbar are used for designing a equipment. So basically, the toolbars are depend upon the licence we have installed.Few basic tools for designing Part Design are PAD or POCKET, SHAFT and GROOVE, HOLE, FILLET and CHAMFER, DRAFT, SHELL, MIRROR, etc. Below are the few images of  a heat exchanger parts designed in CATIA.

Fig.1 Outer Shell of Heat Exchanger

Fig.2 Baffle

One can also see the designed parts in different colors and can also change the material of the part. you can also see the parts in different view like multi-view, top view, side view, front view and back view. Lets see how these looks in CATIA. Fig (a) represents the multi-view, Fig (b) represent the top view of heat exchanger shell. In Fig (c) the material is added to baffle. the material added here is stainless steel. There are numerous materials on CATIA like gold,silver, copper, tin,etc.

Fig (a)

Fig (b)

Fig (c)

• BUILDING A PRODUCT

Once you have design several parts of you equipment, now it's time to design the product by arranging your parts in assembling section. One can assemble the parts by following steps.

1. creating a product file.
2. inserting parts.
3. moving parts around.
4. giving constraints and relationships.

Constraints are created by external elements. There are various types of constraints like coincident constraints which can be applied to points, lines and arcs. During the assembling of parts the main difficulty comes in merging the parts with each other. For this one should use use MANIPULATION tool. Now below are few images of a assembled Heat Exchanger. In fig (c) merging of baffles is taking place. While doing this one should take care of axis and plane also. You can also see various geometry of your designed product like 3D wire-frame geometry (as shown in Fig (d)). 

Fig (c)

Fig (d)

• DRAFTING

The best way to generate a PDF of  the drawing is : File > Save as PDF. For inserting symbols while drafting you should use a special toolbar. There is no need to worry while drafting because once you have created a dimension you can change its format. For this you should go into properties of your dimension. You can also select the  orientation of  your dimension by TOOLS PALLET. Remember while making a drawing you must have the CATPart or CATProduct open to link to.