P&ID symbology in Plant 3D

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A process and instrumentation diagram (P&ID) represents the starting point for most plant designs,

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and helps the engineer understand how a system is supposed to operate.

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In AutoCAD Plant 3D, you should create these diagrams prior to actually adding modeling components, creating orthographic views,

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or developing isometric spool drawings.

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Your company may already have a symbol library, but is it using industry standards?

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It's important to review your default content, then use what best reflects the standards you want to follow.

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AutoCAD Plant 3D can help you be compliant, with symbology based on these standards: PIP (Process Industry Practices),

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ISA (Instrument Society of America), ISO, JIS, and DIN (International, Japanese, and German standards organizations).

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Start by setting the P&ID PIP workspace.

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From the Tool Palettes, Equipment tab, select a horizontal centrifugal pump symbol.

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To see the symbol more clearly, you can turn the grid off by pressing the F7 function key, or by selecting Grid on the Drawing Status bar.

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Place it in the current drawing.

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The Assign Tag dialog appears for you to tag the pump.

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For this tutorial, click Cancel to skip the tag creation.

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Note how the pump symbol appears.

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This may not be the same symbol that you normally use to create your diagrams.

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You can try another standard.

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Switch to the P&ID ISA workspace.

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From the Tool Palettes, Equipment tab, notice how the pump symbols look completely different from the PIP standards.

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By changing workspaces and palettes based on specific standards, you can start with your library,

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matching the most common standard to follow.

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The symbology will match for different types of symbols, including:

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Equipment, which includes pumps, tanks, and vessels;

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Nozzles used for connections to equipment;

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Instruments including control valves, flow meters, and instrument bubbles;

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Inline components that are supported by a pipe run, such as valves and reducers;

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And non-engineering items including connectors, flow arrows, and other symbology that doesn't contain any reportable data.

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You can also edit the symbology, if needed.

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P&ID content has intelligent data associated with the symbols, such as the part type and number, loop number, and pipe size.

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This data is automatically associated with a database, and updates immediately as the data is changed