topic Re: Alternative add in for P&ID in AutoCAD Forum

Alternative add in for P&ID

johan_degreef1 — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 11:35:34 GMT

Is there - besides the full Plant 3D P&ID program, an add-in to normal Autocad to place valves and equipement, break process lines on inserting them, make line crossings a bit nicer, etc

We just like to keep the single dwg instead of a whole Project folder that comes with Plant 3D, but with an easier toolset to insert p&id specific stuff.

Many Thanks, Johan

Re: Alternative add in for P&ID

pendean — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 13:10:52 GMT

Did you get a chance to look around here yet @johan_degreef1

https://apps.autodesk.com/ACD/en/Home/Index

Not seeing much here but I did not check every link, but you can

https://www.google.com/search?q=P%26ID+add-on+for+autocad

You may not find anything that is free BTW, since free is that other variant.

I saw a post in the LISP forum recently from someone asking for a LISP option, try searching there too.

Re: Alternative add in for P&ID

johan_degreef1 — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 13:14:41 GMT

@pendean

I did that first, and when found nothing, asked the question here among the experts.

Re: Alternative add in for P&ID

CGBenner — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 13:15:51 GMT

@johan_degreef1 @pendean

In my previous life we used Vanilla AutoCAD and dynamic blocks to create P&IDs. No custom programming needed, but also no intelligence built into the documents. It was a poor man's solution since Acad P&ID didn't really work for our needs.

Re: Alternative add in for P&ID

pendean — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 13:39:22 GMT

@johan_degreef1 wrote:
...I did that first, and when found nothing...

Wonder why you never mentioned that in your first post then: remember, no one knows you or what you do know and have done or seen, so you have to be very forthcoming with information and details.

Re: Alternative add in for P&ID

pkolarik — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 14:01:38 GMT

@CGBenner wrote:
@johan_degreef1@pendean

In my previous life we used Vanilla AutoCAD and dynamic blocks to create P&IDs. No custom programming needed, but also no intelligence built into the documents. It was a poor man's solution since Acad P&ID didn't really work for our needs.

This is how we'd always done it too until making the move to use Plant 3d's PI&D "module" to create our PID's. We don't use Plant3d at all other than for the PI&D's. So we figured out a way to get the PI&D projects to play nice with our established Sheet Set Manager setup, because we still use ACA and Civil3D on all of our projects (and Revit, but there's no integration there in our office yet). We got P3d up and running for PID creation almost two months ago and haven't looked back since.

Re: Alternative add in for P&ID

pkolarik — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 14:04:55 GMT

@johan_degreef1 wrote:
Is there - besides the full Plant 3D P&ID program, an add-in to normal Autocad to place valves and equipement, break process lines on inserting them, make line crossings a bit nicer, etc

We just like to keep the single dwg instead of a whole Project folder that comes with Plant 3D, but with an easier toolset to insert p&id specific stuff.

I'm curious what you mean by "like to keep the single dwg". Do you currently do all your PI&D's in one .dwg file with multiple layout tabs?

We finally bit the bullet last summer (finalized setup in the last couple months) and went all-in on using Plant3d's PI&D module for our PIDs. But we're also looking to integrate our MS Excel equipment lists with our PID's (short term goal), as well as with our revit models for W/WW piping (long term goal).

Re: Alternative add in for P&ID

johan_degreef1 — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 14:08:07 GMT

Well, Plant 3d is nice and I used it in previous occasions, but it has also many drawbacks. People like to work with a DWG, not with a whole project folder to manage. Plant 3d also crashes regurarly, so I rather do it in single drawing style.

I do like the bits in Plant 3d that inserts valves and breaks lines (vertically and horizontally), the automatic line crossings. It is a shame that this software is over 30yrs old without any major updates...

Re: Alternative add in for P&ID

johan_degreef1 — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 14:19:32 GMT

@pkolarik wrote:
I'm curious what you mean by "like to keep the single dwg". Do you currently do all your PI&D's in one .dwg file with multiple layout tabs?

Yes 1 dwg, you can copy around, and have it all.

We can have multiple layouts.

Re: Alternative add in for P&ID

CGBenner — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 19:10:44 GMT

@johan_degreef1

Hello, do you still need help with this question?

Re: Alternative add in for P&ID

RSomppi — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 16:40:42 GMT

@johan_degreef1 wrote:
It is a shame that this software is over 30yrs old without any major updates...

Plant 3D is only 20 yrs old and I'm sure there have been a number of major updates.

Re: Alternative add in for P&ID

pkolarik — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 13:20:44 GMT

@johan_degreef1 wrote:
@pkolarik wrote:
I'm curious what you mean by "like to keep the single dwg". Do you currently do all your PI&D's in one .dwg file with multiple layout tabs?
Yes 1 dwg, you can copy around, and have it all.
We can have multiple layouts.

That's how we did our PID's before jumping to Plant3d. One massive xref with all the PID geometry and annotation in it. But we then xreffed that file into individual numbered sheets for inclusion in the project.

We've found you can "copy around" the PID elements in P3d to start/create new PIDs, so you're not losing anything there (well, once you have enough P3d PIDs created to have a content stash. But that's the same regardless of what software or method you use). And our engineers like to browse the PID xref we had previously created in TruView, so we simply create a "master file" that has all the P3d .dwg files xreffed in so that they can still browse the entire project PID xref all at once.

Re: Alternative add in for P&ID

pkolarik — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 13:25:38 GMT

@johan_degreef1 wrote:
Well, Plant 3d is nice and I used it in previous occasions, but it has also many drawbacks. People like to work with a DWG, not with a whole project folder to manage. Plant 3d also crashes regurarly, so I rather do it in single drawing style.

I do like the bits in Plant 3d that inserts valves and breaks lines (vertically and horizontally), the automatic line crossings. It is a shame that this software is over 30yrs old without any major updates...

We haven't found the need to have to "manage" the mass of subfolders that P3d creates. We have them all placed under a "Plant3D" subfolder under our main project folder so we basically never have to see it, look in it, or manage anything in it.

We also have not seen hardly any P3d crashes at all. We've only been using it for about 7 months on and off (the last 2 months regularly) and almost no crashes.

I'm curious what these "drawbacks" are that you say it has. The only issues we've found (and overcame) were mostly due to the way we do our autocad-based stuff here already and trying to brute-force Plant3d into fitting with those procedures (which, we were able to do successfully).

"30 years old without any major updates". What updates does it need? It works for us just fine with whatever state it's currently in, so to us if there's updates in the past or future is irrelevant.