ABZ recently received a recommendation from a new DFS customer. Quotes from his letter are provided below:

"I have been using PIPE-FLO® for 10 years and am switching to DesigNet for the following reasons."

Cost

“My personal opinion as a professional engineer is that, for the money, I get way more bells and whistles in a very user friendly package with ABZ Inc's DesigNet versus any version of PIPE-FLO® or AFT Fathom and the cost is much less.”

“Comparing apples to apples, PIPE-FLO® costs significantly more (three times as much) than Design Net without getting compressible flow capabilities. PIPE-FLO® has developed a "lite" version to keep the costs down but it only handles about 25 pipelines.”

DesigNet provides both compressible and incompressible flow calculation in one easy to use package at a cost of less than 15% of PIPE-FLOW® (when comparing the $825 cost of DesigNet versus the almost $6,000 cost of PIPE-FLOW® Professional and PIPE-FLOW® Compressible together. This cost difference is even more dramatic for multi-user copies).

Ease of Use

“To do compressible flow calculations with PIPE-FLO® Professional, I have to break down the piping system in many small pieces to fall within the parameters in Crane Technical Paper 410 regarding restrictions to observe in applying the Darcy formula. This requires significantly more labor to add more nodes and pipelines.”

“To use a program that only does incompressible problems, the user must manipulate the input such that the compressibility of the fluid can be ignored during the solution. This is very time consuming and error prone. With DesigNet, there is no need to manipulate the input data to solve a compressible problem.”

“To perform a PIPE-FLO® calculation, two files have to be created, the final file being the pipeline line up. This is labor intensive and sets you up for mistakes.”

“When performing single line incompressible liquid flow calculations, even the old ABZ Crane Companion DOS Version blows away PIPE-FLO® in speed and simplicity. New runs requiring changes in fluid properties can be made in a fraction of the time using the (ABZ) Crane Companion versus PIPE-FLO®.”

With DesigNet, the user specifies the actual or planned piping system without regard to any program limits or special actions based on fluid type. The user simply lays out the system, defines the fluid, specifies what is known and DesigNet does the rest.

Program Output Quality

“Nearly every person I've talked to who's used PIPE-FLO® or reviewed the results, says that the output results are extremely confusing and very hard to understand. I almost always have to sit down with my clients and "teach" them how to decipher the output.”

“Fonts on flow sheet graphics labels are too small and have been that way for 10 years. Clients have complained on just about every set of calculations I've reviewed with them that they have a hard time seeing the results on the pipeline graphics.”
DesigNet’s user interface and output reports were designed by engineers for engineers. DesigNet customer have consistently remarked how much their clients have appreciated the program outputs. ABZ has listened to our customers and incorporated user comments with each version of DesigNet.

“One of the biggest problems with PIPE-FLO® for the past 10 years is the failure for PIPE-FLO® developers to provide for one to see intermediate pressures at any point in the system without having to spend extra time adding more nodes and pipelines.” With DesigNet, the user only needs to click on a branch in the network to see intermediate pressures and flows. In addition, printouts can be generated that provide the same information and more.

What DesigNet Competitors Say

“When evaluating PIPE-FLO® versus DesignNet, I asked the developers of disadvantages of their competitors. The only negative I got from PIPE-FLO® sales people was that DesigNet may take extra minutes to run complicated pipeline systems versus PIPE-FLO®. i.e., the actual calculation engine is supposed to be much faster than DesignNet. The occurrence of a calculation requiring that type of intense model is so rare with most engineering consulting companies or major owner/operators that I'll put up with the extra run time to get the many extra features at such a good value.”

Competing programs may make underlying simplifications when solving a problem with the goal of achieving faster results. DesigNet does not. ABZ has dramatically increased the speed of DesigNet in the upcoming version 4 by being more creative in programing rather than oversimplifying the calculation methods.

*PIPE-FLO® is a registered trademark of Engineered Software, Inc.