Plant3D vs SmartPlant vs Inventor

[james.bergey]

Hello all, I'm looking for some honest opinions from people that have ACTUALLY USED Plant3D and one of the other softwares.

My company designs small to pretty large water processing plants, where piping is a big component of what we do.

We used a company from India to support us with Plant3D on our last larger project as we didn't have in house experience with Plant3D yet, and not enough human resources to manage the project in Inventor.  

I would considered myself to be quite proficient/advanced with Inventor having used it for the last 3 years and designed a few plants with it, using Tube and Pipe and Frame Generator heavily. We are also looking at using AutoCAD electrical and the Electrical Cable routing module of Inventor. 

We have been spending the last couple month learning Plant3D, and I have to be honest, it's the worst program I have ever used, and after all this time I am still not remotely comfortable even doing the simplest designs. My coworker is of the same opinion, we have both learned several different CAD programs over the years (we both have over 20 yrs experience and not much hair LOL), and we are both incredibly frustrated with the stage we are at in getting up to speed with the amount of time we have put into this. It feels like this would be a great program if it was 1999, not 2023. There are some good features about it, but the based architecture of the program is severely dated and really flawed and all the dressing in the world can't make up for that. 

My Boss comes from a background of using SmartPlant, and has zero experience using Inventor, and also has not actually used PLant3D. So she is more comfortable with the terminology and initial layout of Plant3D, but I get the sense that SmartPlant is a far superior and much more user friendly program. Here is a direct quote from somebody that has used both "Usually the modeling of an item which you can model in 1hr in SmartPlant takes you a day to finish in AutoCAD Plant 3D in a complex area."

She is really pushing for us to use Plant3D rather than Inventor, and I think this is because Inventor is just foreign to her, and she also doesn't realize the what I believe is a large gap between SmartPlant and Plant3D (to be fair, there is also a large $ gap between the two as well). 

Using SmartPlant is not in the cards, we are not switching, but we are trying to make a strong case to use Inventor over Plant3D.

OK, so to start things off. The P&ID module of Plant3D seems quite useful and we are intending to use that, also the auto generated ISOs from Plant3D are amazingly quick to produce, which is a huge time saver. However because we have Plant3D and Inventor, you can also easily export a PCF from Inventor and create the ISOs using Plant3D, so this aspect is actually a moot point, not a plus for using Plant3D to model everything.

So outside of the extra processing power required to design in Inventor over Plant3D, I can't see a single positive reason to use Plant3D over Inventor for all the modelling. We have the processing power covered by having brand new specially developed CAD machines, and we have developed a modelling structure that does not require us to have very large assemblies open all the time, we have everything broken down into sub assemblies for each building and multiple sub assemblies for each building, so we rarely ever need each complete building open and almost never need the entire plant level open all at once.

Inventor is just a far superior program in every aspect, it's so much faster to model in and WAY FASTER to make edits and changes to existing equipment and piping runs. I also find the software more stable (less glitchty), and because components are constrained, the model is very stable, and you know where stuff is and it can't be moved with out you knowing about it.

So people that have used SmartPlant and Plant3D, am I correct, is it a much superior software?

Those of you that have used Plant3D and Inventor, is there any good reason to use Plant3D over Inventor?

I do want to hear if there are good reasons to use Inventor over Plant3D.

Thanks

James

[h_eger]

Dear @james.bergey ,

I have worked with many programmes to create water treatment systems. Starting with PDS (SmartPlan 3D), PDMS (E3D), AC Plant Design and finally Plant 3D.
Everything has its advantages and disadvantages, but since 2009 I have been working 90% with Plant 3D for the piping part. We also use Inventor for the construction of equipment and components or the frame generator for smaller steel constructions.

I have been supporting the Swiss Water and Wastewater Association with the integration of Plant 3D for the design of new plants and rebuilds of existing plants since 2018.

In the last 5 years, I have accompanied several small and medium-sized companies in the transition from Inventor to Plant 3D. This mainly involves the planning of pipelines.

I can't say much about the problems you encounter when working with Plant 3D because I don't know the infrastructure of your Plant 3D configuration.

[james.bergey]

Thanks @h_eger. I appreciate your perspective. 

Your in a bit of different situation where you have been using P3D for a long time, so I can definitely see how it would make sense for you to continue using PLant3D, but given we are both very proficient/expert with Inventor, do you see what reasons we would have to switch from Inventor to Plant3D? We have invested considerable time in developing all out own custom piping components to use in Inventor, and to switch to Plant3D there would be a quite considerable learning curve and time investment to get all the templates and pipe classes etc. to where we need them. 

I guess I propose this question to you, seeing as Tube and Pipe Module in Inventor has progressed substantially in recent years, what advantage is there to switching over to Plant3D for us?

[Michiel.Valcke]

If you are proficient with Inventor and it can meet your needs, then there is no reason to go away from it. Plant 3D offers some other piping specific workflows that Inventor does not have (and probably will never have) that make it most of the times (not always) a better tool for piping system management.
- Unique tagging system

- Database model that also governs connection rules for different types of pipe connections (including fasteners)

- easy reporting tools in both the datamanager and the report creator

- isometric .dwg generation (with high customizability)
- P&ID functionality (including setting it up so both P&ID and P3D use the same tags and consitency between the 2 can be checked and verified)

- A catalog / spec system that corresponds directly with the way specs are setup in reality, including branch tables for connection rules for branches.

Some things can be done in both:

- orthographic .dwg generation

- basic pipe routing

- placement of equipement and inline assets

- using point clouds as references

Some things Inventor is better:
- using, creating and dealing with complex geometry (both in pipe-runs and in inline assets)

- making piperuns easily editable (because Inventor is parametric and AutoCAD is not)

- tube and flexible hose
- supporting structures (frame generator)

A lot of people make workflows between the two programs, for example in Plant 3D you could treat complex skids with a lot of inner piping as an equipment. You can model it in Inventor easily and use the BIM Content environment and a simplified version to import it in Plant 3D. All large connecting piping you can do in Plant 3D and take advantage of its pipe management workflows. while at the same time profiting of Inventor's ability to better deal with the mechanical demands needed with the construction and interior design of your skids.

[james.bergey]

Thank you, @Michiel.Valcke that was very helpful.

FYI, "- Unique tagging system" you can do this in inventor now. They call it "Instance Properties".

I think this was new for 2022.

"isometric .dwg generation (with high customizability)" this part of Plant3D is def a fantastic feature, very quick.

We have figured out how to do this by importing the PCF from inventor and creating the ISO from Plant3D. it's very quick.

[Michiel.Valcke]

Instance properties in Inventor can only go so far. That is why I didn't include them in list 🙂 

If you use a lot of returning sub-assemblies, the instance properties cannot be propagated from within the top assembly, only from within the lowest assembly level. Which means that you are limited to a very flat structure. This is not ideal for bigger piperuns where you have a lot of control loops, or connection stations that are repeated. In ideal Inventor philosophy you would like a single assembly (with subassemblies) that is inserted multiple times.

Ofcourse within that single assembly you can use instance properties, but if you use the assembly twice in a larger assembly the instance properties cannot be differentiated. so instead of having a run with HV-101/HV-102/... next to the same run with HV-201/HV-202/... you will have two pairs of HV-101/HV-102/...

Isogen export and importing the PCF is a good way to recover piperuns for isometric dwg generation. But if you have a lot of custom parts/components you still have a lot of work in Plant 3D to set it up correctly. So a lot of people I know defer from doing so for their Inventor piping.

[james.bergey]

Thanks man, really helpful replies! 

"But if you have a lot of custom parts/components you still have a lot of work in Plant 3D to set it up correctly."

This seems like a pain within P3D as well, no? 

For example we often have pumps, or Flow Meters, or other equipment that comes with #300 flanges, but our pipe lines are all #150. P3D doesn't seem to like mixing those multiple pipe classes. 

We do have a lot of custom flanges etc. especially on our smaller plants, but there is a good chance we will be doing those in Inventor anyways.  

[Michiel.Valcke]

the implication was that since you have to do the customized parts in both packages, they would prefer to do it in a single one (Plant 3D because of the isometric output or some other output) so a lot of times piping done in Inventor is also skipping the isometric output.