P&ID Drawing?

[Bill.Schmid]

First, I'm not an experienced user of AutoCAD Electrical.  It recently became part of the Inventor Design Suite we use, so now we have it.

Second, I was handed a Steam Piping Flow Diagram for a generator with LOTS of revisions.  It's pretty much a re-draw.  I was going to go at it in regular AutoCAD.

But, I see that AutoCAD Electrical has a good assortment of P&ID symbols available and I'm assuming it would produce a better quality drawing that we could do more with in the future than just drawing it in AutoCAD.

Is it really that much better and faster, once you learn how to use it?

Is the learning curve pretty steep, or not too bad?

Do you find it difficult to create / add symbols that are as functional as the ones that come with AutoCAD Electrical?

Thanks for any recommendations.

[cbenner]

I've been doing a little bit of messing with this lately in my "spare" time.  From my own standpoint, I'm not terribly impressed with the out of the box symbol libraries.  This, however, is partly because they don't look anything like the thousands of drawings we have in our archives.  I did some testing on how to modify the libraries or create my own, and came to the conclusion that it could be done fairly easily... if not quickly.  That depends on how many symbols you need to create.  Symbol builder for creating P&ID symbols is essentially the same as electrical symbols with a few notable exceptions, mainly dealing with symbols where you'll want the Tag Number to be on two lines (Instrument tags for example).  My biggest challenge was in figuring out how to do my line information tags.  I ended up using layer controlled wire numbers, that included our line spec, fluid code etc... it was not fun. 

Bottom line, if you go that route, do some testing and be prepared to go all in and set aside some time for setting up symbol libraries.  This P&ID was done with Acad Electrical and is virtually identical to the same document in vanilla Autocad.

[Bill.Schmid]

Chris,

Thanks.  Is the symbol builder much different from the AutoCAD block editor?  I'm pretty good at working with that, using attributes and creating dynamic blocks.  Sort of like you said, it's not that quick, but it's not that difficult.

[cbenner]

Symbol Builder is a bit different.  I would suggest going to the Help section and reading up on the procedures involved.  Since you've done a lot of block creation in the past, I think that might give you enough to get started.  Things to look out for are:

• Which Attribute Template you select for the symbol.
• Where you save the symbol itself, and
• Where you save the image file it creates... you'll need that later to add it to an icon menu.

Basically you will create the geometry of the block, call up the Symbol Builder and select that geometry and an insertion point.  Then you decide what Attribute Template to use (in your case P&ID).  Decide if this is a horizontal or vertical symbol (you will need one of each for each symbol since it chooses which one to insert based on wether you are placing it in a horizontal or vertical line).  From there it will take you into a Block Editor screen with the Symbol Builder Attribute Editor, where you decide which attributes from the template to place on the block.  In this screen you can also set the justification, size, location and other values for each or all of the attributes.  When you have it set the way you like, hit DONE, and it takes you to a screen to name the block, and point to a library location for the block and the image file.

Read up on it, try a few... you'll get it in no time.... I hope.   😄

btw.... to Split the Tag # into two lines:  note that the attribute is called TAG1.... do not place that from the attribute editor, instead use the traditional attribute creation method and create two called TAG1_PART1, and TAG1_PART2.  AcadE will split the Tag # when you place the symbol.. it's pretty slick how it knows where to split it.

Good hunting!

[Bill.Schmid]

Sounds like block editor on steroids!  I was going to go through the tutorials before I dove into it.

[dougmcalexander]

Symbol creation is easy. It's all about the attributes. The newer symbol builder works in a block editor environment so it should be easy for you to learn. Follow the instructions in the previous post. There is a way to use the old symbol builder, which creates the new symbol in place on the drawing where it will be used. Draw the basic shape of your symbol on the drawing where it will be inserted. Type WD_SYM_BUILD at the command line to start the original symbol builder. Select the basic shape you created. Follow the prompts. I use both symbol builders, according to the need.

The advantage of using P&ID, Hydraulic, and Pneumatic symbols from AutoCAD Electrical is that they can be intelligently linked to their electrical schematic counterpart, using the WDTAGALT attribute. Find out more in the advanced productivity section of help.

[rwydesk500]

WDTAGALT attribute can be added to any custom component too, right?

[Bill.Schmid]

Doug,

You were right.  The symbol creation seems pretty easy.  I went through the tutorial and have since created a custom component.  In looking at the drawing I'm converting, I suspect I'll be creating a few more.

[Bill.Schmid]

Doug,

You were right.  The symbol creation seems pretty easy.  I went through the tutorial and have since created a custom component.  In looking at the drawing I'm converting, I suspect I'll be creating a few more.