Hello all,
I was just talking on the phone to my reseller about some things when he dropped this bomb on me... "AutoCAD Electrical will do P&ID's".
Ummmm... wow. That never even occurred to me. We have the Product Design Suite Ultimate and were just talking in our office about how it's a bummer that AutoCAD P&ID isn't included in the suite. What we were looking for is a way to generate our P&ID's for our oil & gas skids that would be parametrically linked to our Inventor designs. What we will settle for is a tool that is better at doing them than just vanilla AutoCAD (which is what we have been doing).
My questions for those who use this program to create P&ID's:
1.) Where would a complete noob start their research on using this program for this without having to sit through un-nessesary stuff about PCB, routing, etc.?
2.) What are the biggest draw-backs and differences to using this program to do this instead of buying AutoCAD P&ID?
3.) Is there a symbol library that exists for this program that we can buy or do we have to create this library on our own?
We've had this program installed on our computers for three years and I can honestly say I've never clicked the icon...
Clicking the icon now.
I probably should mention that our designs are mostly piping and valves with a handful (but not many) of gauges, meters, and pumps/motors.
@jeanchile wrote:
3.) Is there a symbol library that exists for this program that we can buy or do we have to create this library on our own?
Okay, so I found this one through trial and error (Ribbon -> Schematic -> Insert Components [Flyout] -> Insert P&ID Component [AEPID]) and played around with some of the tools. Still looking for help with question #1 and certainly #2 plus a new one...
4.) Does anyone have some kind of "best practices" or advice type of things I should put down as part of my research?
E.G. Do people use paper space for their P&ID's or do they generally do everything in model space? When we were using AutoCAD (5 years ago) it was strictly for accurate/scaleable geometry where paper space had some useful functions but I'm curious what others do with this type of thing.
For question 4, I would suggest that you stick with modelspace for the P&ID dwgs unless you are doing dwgs to scale.
Electrical is not really set up to take advantage of the multiple Paperspace layouts availble. However, you can use the FIRST paperspace for your title block with everything else drawn in the paperspace.
Regards Brad
Icemanau (NNTP handle: Brad Coleman
AutoCAD Electrical User and IT Hardware Support
the p&id symbols in Acade are basically an add on symbol set which was designed to link in with the electrical symbols same goes for the pneumatics / hydraulic symbols a basic after thought with no real effort into what designers/engineers in that discipline actually require
I can charitably say they work and that’s about it for you to link to your mechanical detail you have to go through the same link that the ACADE symbols will go and its basically rubbish no one that I know has ever linked there ACADE to inventor and there is valid reasons why nobody is doing it
This will change but since Autodesk is notoriously slow at implementing change (it took them 10 years to implement next /previous page numbers on an Acade document well done their you only have implemented something that everybody else has done from the beginning but you seem to think it’s an achievement!!!!!)
your only hope that the inventor /Acade link will improve is lost sales to Solidworks as they have produced Solidworks electrical which seamlessly links with Solidworks mechanical and is basically what an electrical package should do when linking with a 3d model
You are invested in inventor and this is what Autodesk will not tell you EPLAN will directly write into Inventor Seamlessly but I don’t know if there P&ID application will do that it’s worth checking them out to see what they do
Here’s a link with eplan talking to inventor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IZh_2UY0T8
Wouldn’t it be sweet if ACADE could do that!!!!!!! (Note the date it was posted)