From the course: AutoCAD Plant 3D Essential Training: Admin

Set up a network-based project - AutoCAD Plant 3D Tutorial

From the course: AutoCAD Plant 3D Essential Training: Admin

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Set up a network-based project

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- [Instructor] Welcome to Chapter Eight, and we're going to take a look at how to set up a multi-user project. Now, your Plant 3D project can be set up on a network location if it's going to be used by more than one user. Since most projects are executed by a team of engineers and designers, it makes sense that the project would be structured a little different than if it's being worked on by a single user on a local PC. In this chapter, we're going to simulate setting up a project on a network location. So first of all, let's take a look at our Exercise Files. We're going to go into Windows to do that. So navigate to desktop, Exercise Files, and now if we come down to our network location, we'll see that we have a C drive here, and inside that, I've set up some folders already that we're going to use as the basis for our network-based project. So first of all, we're going to take a look at the project. And now when we set up a project, there's a number of things that we want to consider. We want to have the Plant 3D project, so the actual core database files, and the Plant 3D project set up, and we want to keep that in the project folder. But we're going to take the ISOs, the ORTHOs, the MODELs, and we're going to map those outside that folder, so that that folder is only for system use. All the deliverables are going to be accessible from one level above. Now, if we go back to our C drive, I have some common files. So here we're going to map our specs, our equipment templates, drawing templates, and data sheets. Now, the reason we're going to do this is because if we are working on the C drive, and we look at our chapter eight project, if that project gets closed out and removed from the network if we have any customized files in there, they're all gone and no longer accessible. If, however, we keep all our common content on a separate drive, we can add and remove projects as we go and not have to worry about whether or not our custom content is being removed from the network. It's always going to reside there, and it's always going to be in the same location for everybody to use. So, what we're going to do first is just a quick note for this. I would suggest, and I think most people work this way, that you have a standard set of folders so that when somebody comes in to look for a Plant 3D project, we're looking at chapter eight project, it's always going to look like that. And that way, people always know where they're going to be going inside a project structure to find the same types of files. So, this is just good file management sense, to devise a standard folder setup, I think, and implement that across either your client base or your company base. We're going to create that new project inside project manager. We're going to locate it on our fake network C drive. So let's go into our project manager, and we're going to say New Project. Now, I'm going to call this project Chapter 08. Now, I'm going to specify a location for that. So I'm going to browse out to my desktop, Exercise Files, Network, C Drive, Plant 3D Projects, and chapter eight. Now, I would've had that chapter eight set up in advance, but if you recall, I have a project folder, and this is where I'm going to actually set up my Plant 3D Project. So I'm going to select that folder, I'm going to say open. Now when I start to path my files, so I'm going to say Next, I'm going to stick with Imperial for this project. Now, let's start to path out here. So specify the directory where our P&ID drawings are stored. So I'm going to just create a new path for this. I'm going to go up to our, let's move back one, so we're looking at our C drive. I'm going to come to Plant 3D Projects, not Common Files, 'cause Common Files may not be project-specific. These are more or less just library files, whereas P&IDs are project-specific. So I'm going to come to our Plant 3D Projects. The files that I create are going to be in chapter eight, PID. So I'm going to say okay. Going to go to Next. Now, let's map again. We're going to take our Plant 3D models, and we're going to place those ones in our chapter eight. We're going to place our models, chapter eight models. Now, our spec sheets. Our spec sheets are not particularly, they're not normally project-specific. They may be client-specific, but normally not project-specific. So in this case, the specs that we develop, we want these to be available to all users on all projects. So I'm going to come out one, and I'm going to put these under the Common Files under Specs. And our orthos again, let's path that out. We want that to be located within our Plant 3D projects inside our chapter eight project, and we're going to keep the orthos right here in this folder. We're going to say okay. And again we're going to do the last path out here. I'm going to do the reference files as well, so under chapter eight Reference. So we're going to set this up with a SQLite database, and I'm going to say Finish. So now let's take a look. I'm going to just pop this along a little bit here and take a look. If we look at our Chapter 08 folder, you'll see that it's located on the network C drive under the Plant 3D Projects, Chapter 08, and Project, Chapter 08 Project. So let's go ahead and look at our Windows folder, and take a look at where these files have been set up. So we're going to go to Desktop, Exercise Files, Network, C drive, so let's take a look at our Plant 3D Project. Under our Plant 3D project, I want to make sure that our project actually has all of our project files in here. Now, you'll notice there's nothing here for specs, because we pathed that outside. If we go to chapter eight, go back, indeed, to our network, C drive, Common Files, we should have all our specs listed in here. And there's all the specs that we have, and they've been placed in a common directory on the network drive. So let's do a quick drawing, let's create a quick P&ID. I'm going to create a new drawing, going to call this 08_01_PID. And let's go out the windows and see where that P&ID was created. Exercise files, network, C drive, Plant 3D projects, chapter eight. Now previously, our P&ID projects would have been created in this folder here, but because we mapped them out, they're outside the project folder and they've been created in this location here. I would say it's good practice to have a typical project directory structure for your Plant 3D project, so that everyone's familiar with where the files are stored regardless of which project they're working on. Keep files such as specs, equipment libraries, and templates in a common location, and have an administrator be responsible for updating them. Project file control is definitely one of the keys to project success.

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