Custom equipment in the the tool palette?

[Anonymous]

Hi guys. At work I use Plant 3D to make detailed 3D drawings of process plants (mostly for the dairy industry). In our spec we have got all the piping parts we need including hundreds of custom made valves, strainers, cuplings and so on. But we also use some other types of equipment that are not supported in the spec, like pumps, instrumentation, tanks, separators, pasturizers etc.. As of today we also have some of these parts in our spec, but because the spec normally shouldnt contain equipment we have put them in there under the category "Cap". This works just fine. And the reason we have done this is because its simply alot faster to just drag and drop equipment from the dynamic tool palette than creating "Custom Equipment" (even if we have all our 3D blocks saved as templates). The only drawback is that our pumps and other equipment shows up as "Cap" in the Data Manager.

Is there any way we can make a palette for this kind of equipment? I know that you can add regular 3D blocks to a palette. But we need to have a palette for Plant Parts with ports and nozzles. Can this be done?

Best regards Morten        

[alexraitt]

Was this ever resolved? I'm currently trying to find a way to make a tool palette for my 3D equipment in Plant 3D 2018

[Artem_Marinin]

Hello @alexraitt

If you want to have an Equipment tool palette you should do the following steps:

1. Convert your Plant 3D equipment into a usual AutoCAD block using BLOCK command. After that save the drawing.

2. Create new palette tab in the palette group. You may call it "EQP" for example.

3. Click equipment block, holding down the mouse button move the block in the EQP palette tab. So you will add equipment block in the palette.

4. For more comfortable using: Right-click the block in the palette. You will see Tool Properties window. Set YES for Promt for rotation and Explode.

Hope it's clear and help you.

[alexraitt]

Thanks, but is there any way to add it to the tool palette as Plant 3D Equipment rather than just as an AutoCAD block? Otherwise it would have to be defined as equipment each time it is brought into the drawing.

[Artem_Marinin]

I mean that first of all you already have plant 3d equipment as plant 3d class with required property values. And after that you should convert this equipment into the block. So if you explode this block you will get your plant 3d equipment with all property values which you set for it.