Abstract
In shipbuilding, equipment is densely arranged in limited spaces, making the routing of connecting pipes acomplex and time-consuming task. While various studies have attempted to automate this process usingcomputational algorithms, most focus solely on finding optimal paths for pipes, that is, optimal pipe routing,limiting their applicability to real-world industries. This study proposes an efficient method for the representation of pipe connections and routing space for pipe routing to solve these limitations and ensure practicalapplication in industrial settings. First, we converted the piping and instrumentation diagram (P&ID) into agraph structure where equipment is represented as vertices and pipes as edges, effectively illustrating complexP&IDs and their connections: start, end, and branch points. The graph structure includes pipe branching information, enabling the development of a computational algorithm to determine branch points and generate branchpipes. In addition, to allocate routing space for pipes considering obstacles, we employed an octree structure forgrid generation. Unlike traditional uniform grids, the octree structure dynamically divides space, creating finegrids in critical areas and coarse grids elsewhere, achieving efficient routing for both small modules and largesystems in shipbuilding. By applying the proposed method to several examples, we could generate pipe routeswithin major ship systems. The method quickly produced designs comparable to existing ones, demonstrating itseffectiveness.
