Cadalyst - January/February 2009 - (Page 27) cadalystlabsreview Figure 4. Any Data Manager field can be used to drag and drop annotation to the drawing screen with automatic equipment location. Figure 3. Data Manager (bottom) allows easy browsing, data mining, and viewing of components in a consolidated interface. block libraries or have tried to find some. With P&ID 2009, you’ll get Process Industry Practices (PIP), Instrument Society of America (ISA), and International Standards Organization/Deutsches Institut für Normung (ISO/DIN) libraries that you can choose from at installation time (see right-hand side of figure 1 as an example). So if you work for a large multinational firm that is doing business in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States you’d simply install all the included symbol libraries and you’d be ready to work on anything. If your work is confined to a single country, just install the appropriate symbol libraries to conserve disk space. To insert symbols into your drawing, simply drag and drop from the tool palettes and your drawing starts to populate and your equipment list is built for you (more on that in the Data Manager section below). You don’t have to think about block names, file folders, proper attributes, or entering anything into a database to build a drawing. A word to the wise: Don’t forget to leave your grid and snaps turned on; all your process lines will center on your equipment later. When you think about how long it would take to create your own libraries of attributed piping symbols and integrate them into database tables, it’s easy to see that the increased cost of P&ID compared with conventional AutoCAD ($4,995 as opposed to $3,995) is well justified. In fact, I think P&ID is a bargain for what it does. The data managed by the Data Manager is contained in a project file (see upper left of the Data Manager in figure 3), which allows it to function as the project database file. Everything you’d ever want to know about any equipment in any drawing is accessed via the Data Manager’s columnar interface on the right side, while locating the basic equipment types (nozzles, valves, or instruments) is accomplished using the data browser along the left. Finally, you can use Data Manager as an intelligent viewer by clicking next to the component you wish to locate in the left-most magnifying glass column to the left of the equipment tag. After you click, the appropriate drawing loads and a zoom executes to take you to the correct view. (Figure 3 shows a zoom view of the instrument tag HS 10102.) Pretty simple and pretty powerful! Annotation and More Data No drawing is ever complete without annotation. And although architectural and mechanical drawings may have linear dimensions as their annotation, P&ID drawings are all about tags, loop numbers, and descriptions. Interestingly enough, all these pieces of information exist in the Data Manager application, so you might think there would be a link between the two. The Data Manager actually does facilitate annotation by allowing you to drag and drop any data from it to the drawing for automatically scaled text annotation. And don’t worry where the annotation should be on the drawing because the text will automatically locate itself near the corresponding equipment while AutoCAD highlights the equipment in question (figure 4). As long as you ensure you have the right data in the Data Manager, AutoCAD P&ID will take care of the rest. It’s All About Data Of course P&ID software wouldn’t be worth much if it couldn’t build equipment, tag, and line lists for reporting to the field and building material lists, right? That’s where the Data Manager module comes into play. The key to understanding the Data Manager is to remember that every object in the drawing has an equipment/tag number that acts as a database identifier and allows the Data Manager to keep track of everything else about the object. The Data Manager typically displays along the bottom of the screen (figure 3) when needed and simply toggles off when performing non-data functions. January/February 2009 cadalyst www.cadalyst.com It Speaks Piping One thing that stands out about AutoCAD P&ID 2009 is that it “speaks piping” throughout the drawing and annotative process. As an example, it uses schematic lines to describe process pipes (not AutoCAD lines or polylines) and annotation and tagging processes instead of AutoCAD’s Dimension or Attribute functions. For those who understand piping, it’s refreshing to work with a software tool that actually seems as if it were programmed by somebody who understands piping instead of a CADophile who expects users to learn a new command vocabulary. 27 http://www.cadalyst.com
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