Modifying Custom Equipment prepared in autoacd

[kumarswapan64]

Please let me know that I have made a 3dmodel in Autocad , made a block then converted into Plant 3d equipment and added some (around 20)nozzles.

Now as per vendor’s drawing equipments needs to be modified its shape and size.

Without exploding the equipment keeping all the nozzles how can I modify the equipment.

Please give me the solution.

[cadwomen]

Hy

"Without exploding the equipment keeping all the nozzles how can I modify the equipment"

no way

cu cw

[Attila.Vallyon]

Unfortunately there is no method to modify the geometry of a converted equipment.

But

There is a way to set up an equipment as an attachement.

So what I did, I converted only the core part of an equipment and then I attached the rest 3D solids with the "Attach Equipment" button.

In case of changing I can always detach later  the size dependent solids, and make the modifications.

But the location of the nozzle centers can not be modified. You can only remove them and create a new nozzle point.

[Rave.Tam]

You can actually use Block Editor to edit the block .The problem when you initially convert a model to an equipment, the block name is automatically generated in the form of anonymous block (*Uxx). There's no way to edit an anonymous block.

So the trick is to first convert the model to a block and named it. In the future, you can just use bedit to edit the model without exploding.

(If you know programming, you can actually convert the anonymous block to a normal block in the database)

[JohnHolder]

I learnt this the hard way.. never ever convert a solid or group of solids to P3D equipment.  always convert it to a block with a name....

[Garrett.Brothers]

Bumping this to link to an associated ideas forum post so other people can vote on it.

Also, does anyone know how to name an unnamed block, like what @Rave.Tam suggests?  A 15-30 minute search didn't get me very far.

[djordje.korica]

Hi there.

This can be done and   very few people know about this trick also  this way is nowhere to be found in the 3d plant guide.

1.First thing make a  new drawing  EQP1 and insert that equipment into  drawing DON'T convert it to plant 3d eqp leave it to original.

2.Second open also new drawing MASTER EQP  and xref first EQP1 drawing .

3.Select xref EQP1 and convert to PLANT 3D EQUIPMENT.

You will see that your xref is now PLANT 3D EQUIPMENT and now when you wnat to change your equipment look  do it on EQP1 drawing and all changes you will se on MASTESR EQP without losing names tag & nozzle data.

If my reply was helpful, please click the "Accept as Solution" 

[rajendra.prajapat]

@kumarswapan64  Please see below screencast.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/community/screencast/214de4b9-153a-4d0f-93c4-68a8ace688e6 

[Garrett.Brothers]

Rajendra,

While what you did is clever, it only appears to work with named blocks. It sounds like Kumar is looking for a solution for when the equipment wasn't made into a named block before conversion.

[Garrett.Brothers]

Djordje,

What you said works.  Either attachment or overlay -- both work.  The base equipment geometry can be edited from the xref file.  Exploding shows the equipment's block reference is *U3 or *U7 or something like that.  However, there are a few things that worry me about this approach:

First and most importantly, this won't work if the equipment is already in the model.  I think it's a viable workflow [barring the other issues, below], but it won't help people in situations like Kumar's.  The question we're trying to figure out is if there's a way to edit an equipment model that was converted without any special setup.  If anyone has an answer for this, please share!

Second, this error ["An xref has been moved to an unsupported location"] appeared any time I selected a point other than (0, 0, 0) as the base insertion point when converting to equipment.  It didn't stop me from converting the equipment, but it worries me.

Third, you can't snap to the equipment geometry when placing nozzles while using this method.  In theory, you could measure out the geometry in the base file and set nozzles that way, but it feels cumbersome.

Fourth, this creates a new file and xref for every equipment model imported to the project.  That can be dealt with, sure, it's just a little harder to keep things neat.

Overall, I think I'd rather use named blocks.  Both methods require setup before converting a model to equipment, but named blocks is neater and seems to be more stable.