Patent Document ID: 8977527
Application ID: 13683585
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for automatically providing process simulation models from piping and instrumentation diagrams for a process, the method comprising: acquiring structured data objects representing, in electronic form, a piping and instrumentation diagram of a process, the structured data objects including an interface to process control loops, said structured data objects being used as input data for forming a process simulation model; generating a virtual control system from the piping and instrumentation diagram of a process, said virtual control system comprising one or more virtual control system I/O components; acquiring piping data representing, in electronic form, the piping and instrumentation diagram of a process, the piping and instrumentation diagram comprising connections to the virtual control system I/O components and among the structured data objects; translating the structured data objects representing process objects in the piping and instrumentation diagram into process simulation model objects, the structured data objects representing the process objects other than the control system I/O components, the translating being performed automatically using predefined mapping definitions and conversion functions, and wherein the predefined mapping definitions and conversion functions include a predefined conversion function comprising: extracting an identifier from a source data object of the structured data objects; selecting, based on the identifier, a destination process simulation model object from a plurality of process simulation model objects contained in a simulation model object library; and mapping, using a predefined mapping definition, the destination process simulation model object to the source data object; and assigning a connection between the destination process simulation model object and at least one of the virtual control system I/O components based on the piping data, the assigning being performed automatically, by a computing device, using predefined rules, the assigning comprising: determining, from the piping data, that a piping connection connects the source data object to the at least one of the virtual control system I/O components on the piping and instrumentation diagram via a process stream, said source data object having been translated into the destination process simulation model object; and using a parameter of the process stream to determine connection to the at least one of the virtual control system I/O components, said determining based on a type of the at least one of the virtual control system I/O components and a property of the parameter of the process stream.