CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is based upon and claims the benefit of priority from Japanese Patent Application No. 2017-045038, filed on Mar. 9, 2017; the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.

FIELD

Embodiments described herein relate generally to a design support system and a design support method.

BACKGROUND

When newly designing a power generation plant such as, for example, a thermal power station, a hydroelectric power station, and a nuclear power station, a designer needs to comprehend various trouble cases, such as a dimensional error, material error, and damage of components, that have occurred in existing power generation plants, and countermeasures thereof in order not to repeat the same trouble. In recent years, a system is introduced which contains a database of review meeting records showing review contents and review results in design stages in the past, as well as records of unsuitable case examples, where a cause and its countermeasure for each trouble are recorded. With the system, a designer can refer to the review meeting records and the unsuitable case examples regardless of his or her own experience. When a designer searches a case example database for a case example, normally, the designer can make a search keyword by selecting a part of specification (component names and the like) of components included in a power generation plant to be designed and conditions to be satisfied by the design for each of a plurality of elements included in the power generation plant such as types of power generation plant such as thermal, hydroelectric, and nuclear power plants, maximum output, power generator rotational speed, and power generation method.

In this case, a large number of review meeting records and records of unsuitable case examples which include keywords are output ted as a search result. However, there is a problem that, in particular, younger designers with less experience cannot determine noteworthy information from among the search result. It is considered as an index to narrow down the search result that review meeting records or unsuitable case examples of a plant whose design is similar to that of a plant to be designed are used as target information in the search. In order to do this, it is necessary to determine similarity between the plant to be designed and an existing plant. As a method for determining such similarity, a method is known which determines similarity between design 3D model data of an existing plant and design 3D model data of a new plant from similarity of installation positions of equipment or piping.

