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Wish List AutoCAD Plant3D 2014

199 REPLIES 199
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Message 1 of 200
ybogdanov
13589 Views, 199 Replies

Wish List AutoCAD Plant3D 2014

I turn to say the same like in the previous wish lists, and I hope that the developer team will help:

- Cable Trays for Plant 3D! It's imposible to design Industry Plant without this component.

- Better Ortho generation: auto dimensions, auto anotation, view hide pipes,...

- Any basic civil modelation (e.g. walls in 3D with special hatch pattern in ortho)

- Better structural modelation (the same like in Structural Detailing)

- Better P&ID integration on 3D, e.g. equipment list P&ID in 3D for insert it

 

Those functions now exist in AutoCAD MEP and Structural Detailing, I think that it will be good solution to integrate the same in Plant3D and convert it in the best Plant software. Because the integration between ASD, Plant3D and MEP it's not good, is not posible have all objects in the same database. It will be better,  to have all Plant solutions in the same softare and in the same database, where with one changing workspace you can design: structural, cable trays, pipes, civil, and after this generate ortho views with all details automatically, generate list of material,... 

 

For Plant Design Suite:

- Add in ultimate suite the Robot for calculation of structure (the same like in building design suite 2013)

 

With those changes the Plant3D will accelerate it integration in industry, and in few time will be the best and more usefull.

Thanks

-----------------------------------------------------------
Yury Bogdanov
ASIDEK(Grupo CT) - Partner Directo de Autodesk
Barcelona (Spain)
199 REPLIES 199
Message 141 of 200
CaveManCode
in reply to: ybogdanov

I second the .Net plugin

as there are a lot of items a end user can add or appreciate the current items.

Message 142 of 200
PPlenevaux
in reply to: ybogdanov

Stucture should be better managed:

 

1. Possibility to create structure details for assembly, just like pipe supports in piping.

2. Possibility to run a railing around a tank, in circular form.

3. Gratings and plates are not managed in Navisworks, because they are hatches, and not 3D objects.

Pascal
PRAYON sa
Message 143 of 200
fholman
in reply to: ybogdanov

I'd simply like to see "error codes" you can search for via the language that any of the AutoDesk products report, and what exactly is meant by them..

 

I have one from Catalog Builder, (The code is apparently self explanatory.) which states:  "ValveActuator Script is empty"

 

Now, searching this gets a blank stare from the whole site.

 

Since there is no field labeled "ValveActuator Script" in Catalog Builder, I must assume it is always empty.

 

Yet without fixing this major problem, no catalog file is forthcoming.

 

I have seen no 3d drawing examples where say... an electrical motor driven valve actuator is shown. (I have to assume someone out there has them in their facilities.

 

Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor. - Heinlein
Message 144 of 200
jhamilton
in reply to: fholman

So you are trying to create motor operated valve actuators to put on your valves, is that correct?
Message 145 of 200
fholman
in reply to: jhamilton

Yes, that is correct, however, the point and reason for posting here was that there is nowhere to discover what the error is and why it came up, as I have had trouble doing in the past.

 

I figured out finally that I had deleted four of the rows created by the Builder when it exported to Excel, apparently that is a no-no.  Once they were re-inserted the build went fine.

 

I can remove the un-needed rows in catalog editor now.

 

So, back to the point, if you generate and error, something should be able to say what it means.

 

 

Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor. - Heinlein
Message 146 of 200
TheCadGuyDavid
in reply to: ybogdanov

The first wish regard the way the project manager holds file structures and relates to orth views. The second wish is about how orthos are done. The next wish is how I wish Orthos to be done.... Interoperability... Oh... maybe there is more to talk about.

 

So... Here it goes:

 

First off, when creating a project one must currently "Copy Drawing to Project" every single time one wants to make a series of piping in the drawing and/or use the "Create Ortho View" button. Plus all of the Xrefs need to be in the project and perfectly "synced with the project" for the "Ortho View Creation" to even show the Xref in question; this creates a lot of wasted time trying to hunt for and sync all drawing files with the project.

 

One way to fix this would be to make the Project Manager look in all the source files every 5-10 minutes and check if the drawings are synced to the project. Also, it would be best to have such a project managing structure that copies everything to the project that is in the Windows file structure of that project, including the DWGs and their folder structure. If it was done this way, when we get multiple drawings from vendors that are just placed into that folder in the network, they would not have to be "Copied to the Project" and we would not have to "Create a New Folder" that may or, may not, actually mimic the file structure in Windows. I have done this at least a thousand times, and it would be nice to have the program work that stuff out so piping works and orthos actually keep all components. It becomes a bigger problem if network security is so strict that it is ineffective as a Vault space. We have two guys that are not even connected to the network, so we have to go in and manually re-sync all the drawings to the project every time we need to update to the network via someone-else’s computer.

 

Ortho Creation is awful. It does exactly what I can do, in about 10 minutes, in about 30 minutes. Essentially, it creates a view that has to be updated, so that every time there is a change in the original drawing, it may not be reflected on the ortho. The way it does it does clipping, collecting geometry, and the FLATSHOT thing, do not seem to be the most efficient way to go about this either. Plus, it will not warn you that something did not end up in the project, so you'll have missing pieces, which turn out to be the out-of-sync Xref DWG. Also, it would be nice if, in the process of ortho creation, Plant warned you that your drawing is probably going to be defective because the entity that Revit sent was not in ACIS solids, but in a polymesh instead--creating a great disappointment when one waits for 10-30 minutes for the view to generate and gets a building that looks like something that could be Spiderman’s lair: random lines everywhere that need trimmings or whiteouts.

 

Also, sometimes we can't even get the drawing into the project because it is "not valid" or something like that. If only the error messages were more descriptive, or even left a code where we could look it up online. Window's even has that capability... why doesn't that work that way.

 

Anyways, since we became so fustrated with the Ortho creation, what we do now is this:

 

1. Make a block that is named "VIEWBLOCK"--it is just a wireframe cube that is scale-able in the x, y, and z direction.

2. In the DWG, put the block in area that will be used for the layouts and scale it, using properties, till it encompasses what you want to see in your views. It might be a good idea to plave this VIEWBLOCK into a tool palette for future use.

3. Make a layout tab.

4. Use Vports, orbit, and scale the drawing as desired. Saving this view would not be a bad idea either.

5. In paperspace use snaps to make the corners go to the VIEWBLOCK created in model space (Not really necessary if one has already done Xclips and has the viewport on a non-print layer).

6. Set the model view, in the viewport, to hidden.

7. If walls are in the way, use 3Dclip inside the viewport till the wall goes away. Also, good layer management helps too (by the way, the viewport color overrides seem a bit inconsistent in the live views, but it seems to plot the way you want it to. this should be addressed as well.)

8. Lock the view and check your scale in case you zoomed at all (3Dclip does not work on locked viewports).

9. Save the view again.

10. Save the drawing.

11. Start dimensioning, and for the love of god DO NOT UNLOCK THE VIEWPORT, or your dimensions will cease to be associative.

 

Once the VIEWBLOCK is made, this seems more reliable, and faster, than the Ortho Creation. I can make three views in about a third of the time that it takes Ortho creation to do it. Also, I can then do more associative dimensioning and expect it almost always to be up to date. Yes, it does increase the drawing MB size to do it this way, so one way to fix that is to make a separate drawing and have it Xref, origin to origin, the drawing in question--making a minimalistic "shell" holding the actual drawing as an Xref. That way you don't have to worry about wasting valuable time having the original drawing load up other vports as well.

 

Why in the world are ortho creation not taking a similar approach? Why not make an extra drawing that is a shell of the already-loaded drawing, Xref the drawing into this shell and do a similar thing to 3DCLIP for each adjacent view? The only thing that is really missing in our company's method is to make adjacent views from the "clipping box" (whatever that green box, with one read side, is). What is even better about our method is that not every DWG has to be a part of a project to show up. Plus, any changes to the actual drawing are LIVE (granted, with the exception of the loading xref thing, but that notification shows up in the xref manager, which we already have open all the time).

 

Oh yeah, on a related note, it would be nice to have a multi-clipping-box capability (it is hinted in the comand line, but freaks out when attempted) and the ability to make 3D blocks easily, plus a way to turn some solids into wireframe objects, but I am sure those are only AutoCAD things. Why not tell them that thought? It seems that there is a severe lack of communication overall because there are so many places to communicate and not one central hub for forums that is easily recognizable. I even wonder if the time I took to post this message was not in vain. To be clear, I am not bashing. I just see it as a situation where it is what it is, but it could be better.

 

We really like Inventor, you guys are doing a great job there. Plus that Simplification tool could be great... that is a little off subject... Well is it? Interoperability needs to be improved for the suites. We have had certain objects that are native to inventor, not even make it into Plant. Don't even get me started on Revit, but I will re-state how it should at least default to ACIS solids, instead of Polymesh, when Exporting to CAD.

 

Okay, I think I am done here. I look forward to any correspondence. I apologize in advance if I made any confusing grammatical errors.

 

Thanks,

Message 147 of 200
jhamilton
in reply to: TheCadGuyDavid

I see your pain, but would have to disagree with the project automatically reading the folder and adding files to the project. There really needs to be some kind of control. Coming from companies that can have many users on a project, they always create multiple files that are just bogus to do layouts with. And worse, they use whatever base file they want and structure as a template. It can cause huge problems, huge numbers of bogus files to select from, display issues, cad issues, all kinds of things can happen. You can have many files, but you should be selective on what is actually part of the project structure for stability. But I would like to see them integrate sheetset manager. I assume you have done the "viewblock". I want to try that solution and see how it works. I wish we could set the reference files to partial load so it does not necessarily have to load all the superfluous data on sections and take forever to load.
Message 148 of 200
TheCadGuyDavid
in reply to: jhamilton

Oh of course, one should not have all the projects operate this way, but the user should be given the option to do it that way. Maybe, when creating a new project, Plant 3D could ask about the amount of users when making the project and offer that alternative. Also, one could have this syncing behavior linked to a binary system variable. One way to manage the folders would be to create a permissions folder that only the users could access inside Windows. On that note, why not make a "project backup" location for all the project files and have autocad manage that somehow, just in case. It could be as simple as making a task scheduler that does this for you, ON A SEPERATE CORE (is there something that does this already?). It would double harddisk usage, but I would feel better. Right now, every day, we make a backup to assure success if any files did suddenly decide it didn't like the computer anymore.

 

I like your idea about the partial load. It seems that Xclip helps on the graphics side, but not on the RAM and processing side. Why not have Xclip work as a partial load? It would be some inventive programming, but it would really help when dealing with larger models. If there was a way to have a "load boundary" for drawings, xrefs and native entities, that would pretty much eliminate the need to split an overall drawing into a thousand pieces, and instead one could go into an area by selection of an area based off of a user cooridinate system. Also, we would eliminate the need for splitting drawings apart after we discovered they were too big, just make your "viewbox" smaller... okay... now I am just dreaming. Games do it though...

 

Oh yeah... And that Sheet manager intigration would be awesome 🙂

Message 149 of 200

One note about the 3Dclip, on ocasion it will make certain things difficult to see. I had columns where they would only be visible on the very corners. The fix for this, as it only happens with simple shaped entities, is to out line the shap where you would see the object, but make sure that outline is outside of where you want to clip. Once you do that, you will see the object in the hidden view. I xrefed an entity in and used the "edit the xref in place" command on the entity and, while in that command, I snapped to the middpoint of each column and made rectangles that mached the cross-sectional perimeters of the columns. I then would see all that I would want to see--especially since those were initially marked in red. I did the same for floors too. So, it is not perfect, but I think it is still better than waiting for the ortho view creation every single time, and those "column marker xrefs" will mostly stay in the same location and I can always freeze them in the viewport where I don't want them visible, using VP FREEZE in the layer manager when in said viewport's model space. Anyways, my suggestion still stands; if we could do orthographic view creation in a similar manner, it could be great. We'd just have to make sure to show the lines of the edges we'd want to see in the similar method. Might be an interesting thing to program though. hmmmm... what about a sort of hybrid? Use a hidden view, then create lines as a 2D overlay wherever there  are potentially missing items that one might want to see; that way so much time would not be spent in collecting geometry, making clippings, and making a 2D version of every single thing that is shown. Updating time would be shortened considerably as well.

Message 150 of 200
l_tony
in reply to: TheCadGuyDavid

Productivity tools:

 

Isometric generation without opening the whole xMB file size -> time consuming. We could generate isometrics from the plant report generator; actually it will need another icon/name/command (and not report generator). Just open, select the line and generate.

This could be also applied to Layout generation, just open a window in which to select the elevation, coordinates, view orientation etc. and maybe a little preview box. It is less stressfull on a system and alot quicker.

 

Not to forget one of the best productivity tool: filter that allows selection/isolation/highlight of any part/part family in the drawing (pipelines, elbows, pumps, gaskets, welds, orifices, valves....). As posted in a detailed previous post of mine. It's a hassle going through the layers.

 

Other tools that everybody wants: tower stairs, cable trays, easyer spec editor (as this is the basis of your EVERY drawing)

 

Cheers.

Message 151 of 200
bmv1365
in reply to: l_tony

Hi

I'm responsible of technical office of construction contractor. I don't use P3D only for design, for management.

to do  that we create some files like "joint history" & "support history" & "piping mto" & "support mto" & ... and we used Excel or Access to create them. I hope we don't need these software’s in new release of P3D for our goal. And may be my offers often refer to that goal:

 

1)      In iso creation, the hypotenuse should be oblique. The extension lines should be parallel to main axes.

 

 

 

1.png

 

 1-1.png

 

1-2.png

 

1-3.png

Message 152 of 200
bmv1365
in reply to: bmv1365

2)      Showing distances from columns (including axes label) and nearest lines including line number labelled with a schematic part like continuation part and also points chosen by user.

 

 

2.png

 

 

 

 

2-1.png

Message 153 of 200
bmv1365
in reply to: bmv1365

3)      Showing angle of cut back elbow in iso [let user to specify a term instead of “cut back elbow” in BOM].

 

 

3.png

Message 154 of 200
bmv1365
in reply to: bmv1365

4)      Possibility to specify a Dim Style for rotation angles (rolling offset).For example PDMS doesn’t use rotation angles .it uses a simple leader just puts angles(not cut back elbow) in a rectangle.

 

 

4.png

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4-1.png

Message 155 of 200
bmv1365
in reply to: bmv1365

5)      Adding expansion joint and reducer flange to default catalog and spec.

6)      Create support detail including BOM and all relative queries.

7)      In spec editor, half couplings sit in coupling category and it is not correct, it should be in olet category and also half couplings split iso so this should be repaired.

😎      It’s possible to export/import created spec to a spread sheet but the problem is about multi-port fittings like tees & red & …  .it doesn’t covers all properties about second/third , … port. for example it is not possible to specify SCH for second port of TEEs in exported spread sheet and editing in data grid view prepared by spec editor is so painful; The offer: possibility to export/import category to spread sheet individually.

9)      I remember it isn’t possible to show “up sch” and “down sch” for tee and reducer in P3D 2013 so this should be repaired.

10)      Possibility to specify a string type for weld number in P3D model.

11)      Possibility to specify a weld number for weld dots that their class is “slip-on”.

 

 

11.png

Message 156 of 200
bmv1365
in reply to: bmv1365

12)      Determine a command to specify weld number, spool number, field/shop weld based on a particular procedure (let user to select) for example start from a special point and meets the header then riser weld dots or using position of user cursor .it is so painful to ctrl+right click the weld dots and modify fields mentioned above in properties pallet.

13)      P3D tries to stretch the pipes to cover “draw area” so it often splits iso and make it bad. More genius and faster iso creation needed.

14)      Auto scale for orthographic using paper size.

15)      Possibility to specify a property of an object HOLD or REV. and this should be reflected in all relative queries for example in iso creation the property of this item should be shown in cloud labeled HOLD for Hold property. And so on for report creator.

 

 

 

15.png

Message 157 of 200
bmv1365
in reply to: bmv1365

16)      Insulation symbol used in P3D isn’t good it doesn’t show insulation limit .it is better to use something like PDMS. And insulation limit should be shown like spec break.

 

 

16.png

Message 158 of 200
bmv1365
in reply to: bmv1365

17)      A method for finding a special spool. For example in most cases in revised iso some spools are deleted and we need to replace them with none constructed spools. The properties for search should be selected by user like size, orientation, length of pipes and ….

18)      Showing weld number (it is better to use joint number) spool number like water marks and a button for show/hide this. Using symbol specified for show in isometric or selecting by user.in this situation it doesn’t need to change to 3dwireframe mode to select weld dots.

19)      Show color spec change like spec change in iso.

 

 

19.png

Message 159 of 200
bmv1365
in reply to: bmv1365

20)      Showing notes for vent, drain, suction, mitered joint and … in iso.

 

20.png

 

 

 

20-1.png

Message 160 of 200
bmv1365
in reply to: bmv1365

21)      Possibility to manage (save in software) old revision. And in new iso it should show revised part using rev cloud and triangle update index automatically.

22)      In iso creation, possibility to specify which part be first sheet and so on (based on break points prepared by user). P3D often changes sheets in iso creation.

23)      Adding R.F.PAD to default catalog and spec. also show weld dots (it is better to use joint dot) for this.

24)      Sometimes continuation part shown in iso isn’t correct.

 

24.png

 

 

 

24-1.png

 

 

 

24-2.png

 

 

 

24-3.png

 

 

 

 

24-4.png

 

 

 

24-5.png

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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