Intro

Have you ever tried to open a project in AutoCAD Plant 3D/P&ID and not been able to?  As projects are developed we may encounter errors or difficulty opening files.  Sometimes things work fine for some people working on the project, but not others.  When a project is networked, these inconsistencies in performance can occur more frequently.  So what’s the problem?

At the end of my last article, “AutoCAD^® Plant 3D and P&ID 2017.1 & 2018 - Spec Driven P&ID Project”, I mentioned that I would next tackle the addition of Pinch, Knife and Rotary Valves to both the P&ID Pipe Spec Object Mapping and the Plant 3D P&ID Object Mapping. In case you do not recall, the reason we need to cover this for the P&ID Spec Driven Project is because those valves are on the tool palette but as seen in this image they do not have a background hatch. If you look back at the previous article, in the Project Settings, I pointed out that the pinch valve was displayed in grey text because it had not been mapped. The same is true for the knife and rotary valves. Since they have not been mapped, the spec verification ignores these components and treats them no different than it would equipment, instrumentation or other components that are not in your specifications.

With the release of the AutoCAD® Plant3D and P&ID 2017.1 update, and the new 2018 version just released, came a new feature which enables P&ID to utilize and reference the Plant 3D Specifications for each project. The purpose of the Spec Driven Project on the P&ID side is not to restrict the user but rather inform the user from the Plant 3D Spec itself when components are found (in spec) or not found (off spec). In other words, if using the out-of-the-box Plant 3D CS150 Spec on your P&ID and you added a 30” Primary Line Segment with a 30” Gate Valve, the Gate Valve would be “In Spec” because the Spec includes a 30” Gate Valve, but the Pipe itself would be “Off Spec” because the Spec does not include Pipe larger than 24”.  Depending on the settings at the time, you would be alerted to this while drawing or verifying the P&ID and would know to either update his Specs to include the larger diameter pipe or modify the P&ID to match the Spec.