When you are creating attributes for blocks, ALWAYS use unique tags.  While AutoCAD will let you add the same tag, supporting multiple tags is not something developer’s think of often, and you may mistake two different attributes at times as well.

In this situation the title block had several attributes that were doubled, but the most important one was DATE:

The reason the tag causes trouble is because Plant 3D populates the DATE tag based on the iso title block setup.

You can map/unmap your attributes, but it looks like the REV and DATE attributes will always have to be mapped.  When I tried to unmap them, they were always reset to mapped. The solution in this situation is to use the block attribute manager (BATTMAN) to rename all but one DATE tag.

I hope this saves someone a headache!

The secret lies in the catalog folder C:\AutoCAD Plant 3D 2013 Content\CPak Common\equipment.  You can put the catalogs on the network.

The equipment folder holds all of the default templates.  One trick I’ve learned is to test and see if files are zipped.  Autodesk tends to make their zipped file type end in x.  The peqx file turned out to be a zip with some interesting content in it.

The [Content_Types].xml is a file that tells programs what extensions are used and how to open relationships.  The .rels file (in rels) tells programs what files are used and how they are identified.

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?>
<Relationships xmlns=”http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/package/2006/relationships”>
<Relationship Type=”Plant/Equipment/EquipmentType” Target=”/content/EquipmentType.xml” Id=”PlantEquipmentType” />
<Relationship Type=”Plant/Equipment/Preview” Target=”/preview/strainer-fls.png” Id=”FLS” />
<Relationship Type=”Plant/Equipment/Preview” Target=”/preview/strainer-flp.png” Id=”FLP” />
<Relationship Type=”Plant/Equipment/Preview” Target=”/preview/strainer-s.png” Id=”S” />
<Relationship Type=”Plant/Equipment/Preview” Target=”/preview/strainer.png” Id=”CPSA001″ />
</Relationships>

The file we are interested in is the Equipmenttype.xml under content.

We are interested in three pieces the GUID, PartType and DisplayName.

Because I copied an existing peqx file (the strainer), I have to create a new GUID (a completely unique identifier). You can use a site like: http://www.guidgenerator.com/online-guid-generator.aspx

to create your own GUID.

The PartType is the category the equipment will be stored under. I tried creating my own category, but that doesn’t work.

The third item, Display Name, is what will show up in the equipment dialog.

I think the equipment gets loaded when the program starts up, because I had to shut down Plant 3D and restart it in order to see the new equipment in the dialog.

Viola! You should be able to see your own equipment in the menu now!

In order to remove the default styles, you will need to follow these steps:

• Create your styles in a project (any project.)
• Close out of the project and Plant 3D.
• In Windows Explorer, delete the default style folders.
• Create a New Project
• Check copy settings from existing project and select the previous project.

I haven’t found a way to remove the default styles permanently from a current project.

Behind the Scenes

So, what’s happening behind the scenes?  In projects that are new and that did not using existing settings, Plant 3D copies the templates from the respective template folders (Imperial or Metric): C:\Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD Plant 3D 2013 – English\ISOProjectTemplates.

Then whenever a drawing is opened, the program checks to make sure the styles are there.  If the styles are not found, they are copied again.

With the folders not there, we can create a new project that will not read from the default Isotemplate directory.

I recommend making a project template specifically for this (and many more) reasons.

In our previous post on launching a specific project, I mentioned the help file location that shows available startup switches for AutoCAD.

http://docs.autodesk.com/ACD/2013/ENU/index.html?url=files/GUID-8E54B6EC-5B52-4F62-B7FC-0D4E1EDF093A.htm,topicNumber=d30e211249

It’s been about four years since I’ve read that and I ran across a switch that I either missed or that they’ve added, /w.  The /w parameter allows you to pick a workspace to load.

The weird thing is that the Plant 3D palette keeps showing up.  Taking notes from a previous tutorial, we can use a script to fix that.

When they introduced the dynamic tool palette last year, they added a new variable PLANTDYNAMICTOOLPALETTE.  With that variable, you can enable or disable the tool palette.  After disabling the palette, use the TPNAVIGATE command to switch to the P&ID PIP tool palette group.

Our startup script looks like this:

(command “PLANTDYNAMICTOOLPALETTE” “D”)
(command “TPNAVIGATE” “G” “P&ID PIP”)

The parameters for our Desktop Icon are:

/w “P&ID PIP” /b “U:\Scripts\LoadPIPPalettes.scr”

We can create a similar icon for Plant by using a startup script like this:

(command “PLANTDYANMICTOOLPALETTE” “E”).  Because the tool palette is one of the last items to load, we don’t have to switch the tool palette group.

The startup parameters would look like this:

/b “U:\Scripts\LoadPlantPalettes.scr” /w “3D Piping”

We are going to use three key pieces of information.  First is that you can create a shortcut for Plant 3D and pass some parameters into it.  That’s a fancy way of saying that I can tell the program what to do before I start it. Then we will create a script file with specific commands.  Last we will create a shortcut that puts all of the steps together.

Shortcuts and Parameters

The main help file for launching AutoCAD with parameters is here:

http://docs.autodesk.com/ACD/2013/ENU/index.html?url=files/GUID-8E54B6EC-5B52-4F62-B7FC-0D4E1EDF093A.htm,topicNumber=d30e211249

The switch we are interested in is the  /b which lets you select a script for AutoCAD to load when it starts up.

Create a Script File

Next we need to learn what a script file is.  Basically, whenever you do something in AutoCAD you are running a command. I think most of us are aware of the command line and how to use it.  For example, when you click on the line button, AutoCAD starts the LINE command and you can see it at the command line.  Well, if you take a list of commands you entered and the values you put it, save it as a text file with the .scr extension, you have a script file.

Here is the contents of the script file we will use:

filedia 0 openproject “C:\Users\dave.wolfe.S-VILLE-ECAD\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\AutoCAD Plant 3D 2013 – English\R19.0\enu\SampleProjects\SampleProject\Project.xml” filedia 1

Note that the script file is all one line and I’ve put quotes around the path.

So we are actually only using two commands, filedia and openproject.  The FILEDIA variable tells AutoCAD not to display dialogs when prompting for input.  In order to specify a path in our script file, we turn FILEDIA off [0].

The next command OPENPROJECT is a standard Plant 3D command, we’re used to using it with a dialog though.

At the end we turn FILEDIA back on so user’s are not wondering what happened to their AutoCAD.

Create our ShortCut

The last steps pull everything together.

Right+click on your Plant 3D icon, select Send To, and then Desktop Create Shortcut.

Pull up the properties of your shortcut by right-clicking on it and selecting properties:

Enter /b and put your script path in the Target Path.  I got my script path by browsing to my file, doing a Shift+right-click and selecting copy as path.

After you paste the path it should look like this:

You will notice that AutoCAD actually ends up opening two projects, the last project opened, and then it switches to the project specified in the script.

If you have admin privileges, you may be better of running a .reg file like this which sets the current project to a value.  Then you can just launch AutoCAD Plant 3D, and it opens it as the last project.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Autodesk\AutoCAD\R19.0\ACAD-B017:409\ProcessPower\CurrentProject]
@=”C:\\Users\\dave.wolfe.S-VILLE-ECAD\\AppData\\Roaming\\Autodesk\\AutoCAD Plant 3D 2013 – English\\R19.0\\enu\\SampleProjects\\SampleProject\\Project.xml”

I think in the long run, I’d probably end up using the script method.  You could always add a shutdown script to set the project to a small template that opens quickly.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and whether you find this useful.

The Iso Config Editor allows loading up an isoconfig.xml in a specialized xml editor.

The editor has the following features:

• View node data
• View Comments
• Edit values
• Right-click clone/delete for lists
• Search

In addition, a button and ribbon panels are on the ribbon inside of Plant 3D giving easy access to the current project’s settings.

Also included is a PDO Plugin manager:

We are in the process of developing several other plugins and you will be able to control whether the plugins load for the current profile from the plugin manager.  In our experience, when troubleshooting, you need to be able to isolate what gets loaded into AutoCAD, so we are providing a way to do that with our plugins.  For example, on my computer I have the config editor loaded and a test app.

Unchecking a plugin box, will prevent AutoCAD from loading the plugin the next time AutoCAD starts.

Don’t forget to check out the YouTube video:

Recently, in my new command perusal, I ran across an old commands that I had not noticed before.

The commands of interest are LOGFILEMODE, LOGFILEPATH, LOGFILEON, LOGFILEOFF. 

Through some more research, I discovered that these options can be set from the profile (and have been there for YEARS).

So, basically when you turn logging on, AutoCAD saves all of the command line input so you can review it if you have issues.

So, now my wish list has been modified from writing that functionality, to making it more visible – and using it more often.

For those of you laughing at my learning such an old feature….oh well.  We all start somewhere, right?!

When you get to working with a lot of models, you need a way to pull everything together for review.  Navisworks facilitates that review and coordination process.

One of the best features of Navisworks is the ability to publish a .nwd file which compacts all the models that are loaded (xrefs and all) into a single file.  With the .nwd, you don’t have to share a bunch of dwg files or references.

As we all know, projects change rapidly. For people trying to coordinate among multiple locations, generating a new .nwd every day is one of the tedious tasks that we can address.

The solution has two parts.  First, we will create a batch file that can publish the .nwd, and then we will use Windows Scheduler to run the batch file at a certain time.

Creating a batch file

The best place to find the information for this particular task is the help file.  In the Navisworks help, go to Quick Start > Command Line options.

The key bit will be using the –nwd option:

In our example, we are only going to publish one dwg.  However, you can add as many files as you need and they will get appended together.

Here’s the text for the batch file

::colons are comments
::use this line if you want to just put a file name in the current directory
::or you can use the full file path, I use file paths in variables so it’s easier to see what the command is doing
set file=”C:\Users\dave.wolfe.S-VILLE-ECAD\Documents\ProjectsDev\Navisworks Publish NWD\PPG-PIPING-01.dwg”
set file1=”C:\Users\dave.wolfe.S-VILLE-ECAD\Documents\ProjectsDev\Navisworks Publish NWD\STR-BUILDING.dwg”
set roamerpath=”C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Navisworks Manage 2012\roamer.exe”
::can be a full path to a file or if just a file name it will be in the folder with the batch file
set publishfilename=Project1.nwd
set publishfile=”%~dp0%publishfilename%”
::include a log file (logs are EXTREMELY detailed)
::set log=%~dp0publish.log
::%roamerpath% -log “%log%” -nwd “project.nwd” %file%
::just publish our .nwd
%roamerpath% -nwd %publishfile% %file%
::publish multiple .dwg to an .nwd
::%roamerpath% -nwd %publishfile% %file% %file1%

Create a text file and change the extension to .bat.  You can copy/paste the text above or just type it. Save the text file.

Scheduling our Batch File

At this point you should be able to run your batch file and have it create the nwd.  The trick now is to have that run automatically.

We are going to use the Windows Task Scheduler to run our batch.  Go to the start menu (now the Windows Icon> All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Task Scheduler

Click Create Task:

Fill in the name and description of the task

Go to the Trigger tab and select new.

Set the task to Daily and specify your preference for time:

Go to Actions and click New.

Select Start  Program and then browse to the location of the batch file you created.

Once you click ok, the task should be created and you can find it under Active Tasks.

Double-click your task, and you should be taken to the task library where you can run the task to test it.

Thankfully, there is an easy fix called the PnPLocalDataCachePurger.exe.  The program is located in your installation directory:

“C:\Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD Plant 3D 2012 – English\PnPLocalDataCachePurger.exe”

A blog article by Mangesh Kalbhor gives more information on it:

You may want to put a shortcut on your desktop for the LDC Purger.

For several years now, Autodesk has been creating and maintaining a certified video card site where you can look up certified video cards that have been tested with AutoCAD.

Now in addition to listing certified video cards, they have also added computer manufacturers.

Here’s the link:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/syscert?siteID=123112&id=18844534

It’d be nice if they could display a list of prices or something, but at least it’s a starting point.

Do you have any thoughts on buying hardware?  How long do you keep your computers in use?