Intelligent plant development library environment
An intelligent plant development library environment is presented. Contemplated environments comprise an EPC knowledge system capable of incorporating know-how of one or more construction firms in the form of assembly objects. Assembly objects represent construction components (e.g., bolts, cable trays, pipes, processing units, deliverables, etc.) that can be incorporated into a plant design. Assembly objects are stored in an assembly database and include available contexts considered relevant to the assembly objects. An inference engine is utilized to derive a specified context related to a plant design from one or more design tools. The inference engine applies rule sets to infer which assembly objects to instantiate as construction objects. The inference engine can further configure the design tools to incorporate the instantiated construction objects into a plant construction project model. Example rule sets include forward chaining rules, backward chaining rules, case-based reasoning rules, inductive reasoning rules, or abductive reasoning rules.
1. A plant development knowledge system comprising:
an assembly database storing a plurality of assembly objects, each of the assembly objects representative of a plant construction component and having an available context; and
an inference engine coupled with the assembly database and comprising a modifiable inference module having inference rules, and configured to:
infer a specified context from attributes of a construction project, wherein the specified context defines one or more design elements within one or more external tools;
select an assembly object from the plurality of assembly objects that is related to the construction project according to the inference rules, the specified context, and the available context;
instantiate a construction object that is representative of a physical construction object from the assembly object by deriving at least one physical attribute of the instantiated construction object based on at least one of the inference rule the specified context and the available context, wherein the least one physical attribute of the instantiated construction object corresponds to at least one physical dimension of the physical construction object; and
configure an external tool to incorporate the instantiated construction object into a construction project model related to the specified context.
2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the modifiable inference module comprises a forward chaining rule set.
3. The system of claim 2 , wherein the attributes of the construction project comprise an initial condition definition.
4. The system of claim 1 , wherein the modifiable inference module comprises a backward chaining rules set.
5. The system of claim 4 , wherein the attributes of the construction project comprise an end condition definition.
6. The system of claim 1 , wherein the modifiable inference module comprises a case-based-reasoning rules set.
7. The system of claim 6 , wherein the attributes of the construction project comprise an initial condition and a final condition.
8. The system of claim 1 , wherein the modifiable inference module comprises a compliance rule set.
9. The system of claim 1 , wherein the inference engine is further configured to select the inference rules based on the specified context.
10. The system of claim 1 , wherein the attributes of the construction project comprise a specified ontology.
11. The system of claim 10 , wherein the instantiated construction object is bound to a second instantiated construction object according to the specified ontology.
12. The system of claim 10 , wherein the available context is selected from a plurality of possible contexts of the assembly object according to the specified ontology.
13. The system of claim 1 , wherein the at least one physical attribute is derived based on behavior rules of the assembly object, the specified context, and the inference rules.
14. The system of claim 13 , wherein the inference engine is configured to select the behavior rules as a function of at least one of the following: the available context and a specified taxonomy.
15. The system of claim 1 , wherein the assembly object is stored according to a tool-agnostic neutral format.
16. The system of claim 15 , further comprising an assembly translator configured to convert the instantiated construction object from a common intermediary format to a tool format accepted by the external tool.
17. The system of claim 1 , wherein the assembly object comprises an assembly of other assembly objects.
18. The system of claim 17 , wherein the instantiated construction object comprises an assembly of other instantiated construction objects.
19. The system of claim 1 , wherein the inference engine is further configured to infer an additional attribute of the construction project from at least one of the attributes of the plant construction component.
20. The system of claim 10 , wherein the specified ontology is selected from a plurality of ontologies linked to the assembly object.