I have to say it’s been an impressive year for the CADWorx Development Team! After the initial release of 2013 at the beginning of the year, they have successfully put out a major release in the August time frame and now again in December with CADWorx 2013 R2. CADWorx 2013 R2 includes the following Enhancements:. Convert CADWorx 2012 and older models into 2013 format and move forward with the latest technology. Review drawings for legacy components. Automatically add couplings between components.
CADWorx/PIPE Piping design: Pros: Highly automated; AutoISO. Holds all of the vital information about each component. This information includes size, description, line numbering, tag, code, weight, sort sequence, length, and specification file association. And then send the modified piping system back to AutoCAD for drawing.
Automatically check the line number when inserting components in a line with the Apply Line Number Rule. For more information, see Apply Line Number Rule in Piping Rules. Decide which items CADWorx automatically updates when using the Change Size, Change Spec, or automatic update of data options Please join us for a live demonstration of the new features. Tuesday, December 18, 11:45-12:15 CST.
Today’s article is going to cover one of the most important topics in, creating external references. Major decisions in setting up a folder structure: 1. Do we need to show equipment without piping (GA’s?).
Where are we going to store our models? What are we going to call them? The results of these decisions are up to you and will vary with company.
In we discussed the effects of decision 1. Here’s a few tips for storing files. Use a template to create the models.
In our sample setup, we are going to use the coordinates template from our post on. The more folders you use, the more times you (and everyone else) will have to click to get to a particular file. Keep your folder structure to a minimum, so you can spend more time working on the file, and less time explaining where it is and getting to it. Setting up a standard file naming system will help navigation (and allow you to use less folders). For our sample project our model naming convention will be Area N Type.dwg where N is a number larger than 0 and Type is a selection from the following (Piping, Equipment, Overall). I like to use Area at the start because most of our work in done in these models, so you don’t have to scroll far to find them. Store a configuration file in the folders.
CADWorx will automatically use the cfg from the current folder when it opens a drawing. The only downside I’ve found to this is that currently the NUMBERPID/NUMBERSET (Process Drawings) prompt to select a database instead of using the db from the cfg. This only occurs if the P&ID’s are kept in separate folders from the piping models. Make a shortcut in your open dialog box, it beats navigation to the project folder every time. In the walkthrough sample, I created an Area 1 Equipment.dwg file using the Coordinates.dwt template, and for our purposes, we will use the following project folder structure: As you can guess, the blocks folder is for project specific blocks. Reference materials will hold cut sheets or other relevant project information.
The Drawings folder will hold all my models and drawings. The individual equipment models (one per equipment tag) are stored in the equipment folder since there could be many files. The Master Models folder will hold Building models (multiple areas all grouped together). The external reference hierarchy will look something like this: This allows other disciplines to reference an entire building at one time if they need it, and give the ability to isolate sections of it for better performance. In the next post we’ll discuss how external references should be created/setup.