AutoCAD® Plant 3D – Specs & Catalogs Editor

A question that seems to be posed by companies when they first look at or test out the 30 day trial of the AutoCAD Plant 3D software is “How do I add Parts to my spec?” I thought this would make a great topic to share with everyone interested in the Plant portfolio of products.

Let me start by explaining that Plant 3D’s pipe routing features are spec driven. The specs that drive your design can be loaded, modified and even created to meet the needs of your design. This is accomplished by opening the Specs and Catalogs Editor that is included with the program.

Once opened (shown above), you will notice there are 2 parts in the welcome screen. The left side allows you to “Create”, “Open” or even “Create from an existing” Spec; while the right side allows you to “Open” or “Create from an existing” Catalog. The Catalogs carry all information such as pipes, valves and fittings per the associated standard. The specs are a filtered set of components, sizes, materials and rules based on the information pulled from the catalog. Specs can be modified or created any time throughout the project.

Plant 3D comes with several catalogs and default specs while providing the flexibility to revise them to fit your specific project needs.

For this example, we will add a 2” gate valve to the Sample Project “Sch 40 PVC” spec. To start, we will click on “Open” under Catalog to bring up the Open Catalog dialog box. We will select “ASME Valves Catalog.pcat” and choose open (shown below).

Once opened, we will use the filtering tools to find a similar valve to start from. The Catalog Editor (shown below) can be found on the top right tab and is divided into segments for optimal control.

The Tools (middle) section filters items against the selections made here such as Part Category, size and end connections. Once you have made your selections, the parts displayed in the Catalog Parts Table (bottom) section have been reduced. You can continue filtering more in this section by using the drop-down lists across this section’s header. Once you have found the part you wanted, select it and the parts properties are displayed in the Common Properties (upper) section.

We want to make the following selections in the Tools section: (shown below)
Part catalog = Valves
Main end connection = SW (socket welded)
Size Range = From 2” and To = 2”

Now that the filtered results are minimal, select the only 2” gate valve with the 150lb pressure class. This will display part information in the Common Properties section.

Important: Do not change any information to this part! We want to create a copy by selecting the “Add Copy to Catalog” button on the Tools section. We now see an identical part in the list at the bottom. Once selected, we want to move up to the “Common Properties” section and scroll down under the General Properties heading and enter “PVC” in the materials filed (shown below).

At this point, we want to click Apply and then, Save the catalog using the File pull-down menu. We have now selected a part, copied the part, modified the material value and saved the catalog.

Let’s click on the “Reset” button in the “Tools” section. This removes all applied filters. Now, let’s scroll over in the bottom section until we see material, click on the pull-down menu for material and select “PVC” (shown below).

This will filter to the newly modified part. We will use this to create our “Sch 40 PVC” gate valve, so select the part in the bottom section. The next steps will focus solely on the “Common Properties” section. (This is an example part; I suggest when creating a part, cut sheets of the required part should be used for accuracy).

First, click on the “View Large Image with Dimensions” link under the thumbnail image. This will bring up a detail of the related dimensions (shown below).

Note: The image can remain open, resized and moved around while editing the parts values.

Now that we understand where the dimension values are represented we can make our changes. Uncheck the box under the “Part Geometry” heading. Hovering over the fields will display additional information about the dimension and its value.

We want to make the following changes under the following headings:

Part Geometry: (there are multiple fields for each below – change both)
L1 =    0.925
L2 =    0.925
I1 =      0.875
I2 =      0.875
L1 =    0.925
L2 =    0.925
I1 =      0.875
I2 =      0.875

General Properties:
Short Description:                Gate Valve
Long Description (Size):     GLUED GATE VALVE, 2" ND, 150 LB, SW, ASME B16.10
Long Description (Family): Glued Gate Valve, 150 LB, SW, ASME B16.10

Port Properties:
Matching Pipe OD1:            2.695 (this matches schedule 40 Pipe OD)
End Type 1:                           PSW (this represents a glued connection)
Engagement Length 1:       .875 (this represents a glued connection)
Matching Pipe OD2:            2.695 (this matches schedule 40 Pipe OD)
End Type 2:                           PSW (this represents a glued connection)
Engagement Length 2:       .875 (this represents a glued connection)

Click the Apply button and Save from the File pull-down menu. We next want to add the part to the Project “Sch 40 PVC” spec. Click on the Spec Editor tab in the top right (shown below) and open the Sch 40 PVC.pspx spec.

Once the spec is opened, switch back to the Catalog Editor Tab, make sure we have the new part selected, then click on the “Add to Spec” button. This will bring up an “Add to Specs” dialog box. Click the check box next to the Sch 40 PVC spec (multiple specs will be listed if multiple specs are opened) and choose OK.

This will add the part to the desired spec which we can now “Save As” into the SpecSheets folder of your current project (shown below – actual location will be determined by you upon creating your project).

So let’s recap:
We copied an existing part in an existing catalog
We modified the part in the existing Catalog
We added the new part to a spec
We then saved the spec to our project specs

Hopefully, this has been helpful in getting to know the Specs & Catalogs Editor and the true power and flexibility in making parts based on required cut sheets pertaining to your projects. Let us know if this article has been helpful by rating the article on the lower right side of the webpage. There is also an area to add additional comments, Please use this to request upcoming topics for posts that you would like to see next time.

This page last edited on Monday, February 14, 2011