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Faster Iso Creation

Faster Iso Creation

Speed up the time it takes to creates Isos in Plant 3D.

15 Comments
DJPiper
Advocate

It's about time to give priority to this one. its still a long way to go to have a touchless isometric. its good if we have it, but For now i rather have a fast isometric extraction in seconds and then manually edit the iso, rather than waiting for a coulple minutes and then I end up touching the iso also.

Arun_Kumar_K
Collaborator

Its time to look into. Thanks damian for coming up with this initiative. ISO should not take more than 10sec for generation, keep it this has a target.

darrelldixon
Advocate

In his classes at AU2015 speaker Mike Musgrave mentioned that at his company they have devloped a program that runs the ISOs in batch outside of Plant 3D. They are able to run them in the evenings or on weekends without having to be there. Something like that would be beneficial.

Ruffy85
Collaborator

i wrote a batch process like this few days ago

 

Here you get it

 

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-plant-3d-forum/push-up-your-workspeed-generate-all-isometrics-...

damian_willcox
Autodesk
Status changed to: Under Review
 
Anonymous
Not applicable

This has been under review for 1,5 years now. I'm using plant 3d to quickly generate some simple isometrics for someone and it takes forever to complete. (Plant 3d 2018).

How can this consume so much time, while in Cadworx it's done in the blink of an eye.

marco.vanderplas
Community Visitor

 Same with our company. Simple isometrics take about 15 minutes to complete. More sophisticated ones more than half an hour (with the time limit of 30s adjusted). Iso's often have to be generated multiple times because of software freezes and fatal errors in the process. We are using Plant3D 2018.

David_Peek
Enthusiast

Even just allowing some automatic post processing would speed things up.  For us its the LDT that is slow.  (each attribute it opens the LDT in Excel grabs the attribute data, closes excel, then opens excel for the next attribute etc. etc.)

So being able to run a lisp or script during the iso production, then we can create our own routines for title block attributes from CSV, and custom stamps, notes etc.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Over 5 years and still the same issues.  Even quick Isometrics take a long time and we still have to manually edit them.  I believe our largest hurdle is getting the isometrics to drop in Production mode for one selected model and not the selected line through multiple models. Yes it will break the isometrics per model but why do we want isometrics  dropped on models that have been previously dropped and issued?  There is no way to stop this.  

alex_714
Explorer

Having the same issue here. 

David_Peek
Enthusiast

Update to my comment 02.17.2019  For your infomation this process we are using is very fast for isos:

We are using this lisp:  http://www.lee-mac.com/updatetitleblock.html

to control all our iso titleblocks.  We turn off LDT in Plant3D iso settings, and only fill in line number and drawing number in the titleblock directly from the Plant3D database. (MAP Attributes)

All other titleblock info is filled in from EXCEL CSV as we open the extracted DWG as per LEE MAC scripts.

We find this process of iso extraction very fast and reliable, even with large quantities of isos.

David_Peek
Enthusiast

My Update for Plant 2025 :

The LDT runs extremely fast and well in Plant 2025.  It is very useful as the LDT data appears in the PCF file as attributes to be used by the fabricator.

With my testing I believe this can be closed as successfully updated and fixed.

@damian_willcox 

luke.coxonUB8Z4
Contributor

 

Hi All

 

The ISO generator is actually pretty fast.

The problem is error loops and time outs.

P3D goes into an error loops on every little problem until it times out and moves onto the next. 

 

Yes, Autodesk should provide a decent error detection app to help us identify them.

But until then, I find the elimination method works a treat and speed things up immensely. 

 

Believe it or not, the biggest choker and the easiest to fix is ISO Templates & Titleblocks.

Most people just copy an existing company titleblock and paste in the ISO template. 

To test if this is your case, or if your template is dodgy. Run the exact same super slow project with a default P3D template or no template at all.

  • ISO template boxes: Draw, No Draw and BOM area boxes. Always have a gap between them. Never on top or overlapping. Even a 0.1mm GAP is fine. Instead of using a no draw box for your North symbol. Make the draw box from a polyline with a cutout for the north symbol. 

 

Other common problems

  • SKEYs and naming. All parts need to be mapped to a 2d symbol. No SKEY and Legit Name = No mapping or Error Loop until Timeout and mapping a placeholder. Check your Catalogues make sure all parts have a legit SKEY.
  • Downloaded or Custom parts, including python scripted parts. Try running a test batch without these. Fix as per above. 
  • There's a bunch of settings you can tweak in the XML files. Some are not in the iso setup UI. 
  • Use breaks in your piping modelling where you think an ISO should break. This helps to reduce error loops and fit on one drawing. 
  • Setup projects so that all piping drawings reference the exact same plant grid 0,0,0. Set the ISO setup X,Y,Z offsets to the agreed coordinate system. 
  • Run isos in controlled batch tests, and look for common items in the problematic runs. Swap the runs around to help ID the problems. Eg It could trace the problems to a particular Catalogue or Parts, or Piping Drafter with rogue downloads or inconsistent parts, or somehow multiple or different templates or titleblocks being used.

Error loops don't sound like a show stopper, but 10 seconds x 50 parts x 50 drawings = 7 hours  

 

Cheers

 

Luke

 

damian_willcox
Autodesk

Thanks @David_Peek , I'll mark this as implemented. This will still be on the radar though as the team is continually looking at performance enhancements and optimizations.

 

@luke.coxonUB8Z4 , will share your thoughts with the team also - thanks.

damian_willcox
Autodesk
Status changed to: Implemented
 

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