Lap Flanges and Stub-ends in Plant 3D 2011 & 2012

By Andy Davis

I've recently been looking at the behaviour of lap flanges and stub-ends in Plant 3D 2011 and discovered some significant issues.  There are 2 main problems:

1. If you drop a lap flange into a pipe then the stubends are added correctly and all is well.  However, if you then try to move the flange-set along the pipe, an error is returned and it disconnects.
2. If you have a fitting poisitioned close to a set of lap flanges and then move the fitting along the pipe to attach directly to a stub-end, the other connecting flange is displaced along the pipe away from the fitting by a distance equal to the minimum pipe length allowed in the current project setup, leaving a gap between the 2 flanges.
    

The good news is that in Plant 3D 2012 these issues have been resolved.