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

Set up your 3D model template - AutoCAD Plant 3D Tutorial

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

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Set up your 3D model template

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- [Voiceover] When we create Plant 3D piping models, we have a few different options as to how we organize our lines inside AutoCAD. We can have our model lines set to display all lines at the same size as the same color or all lines of the same spec as the same color or assign each line number to its own layer. We access these settings in the Plant 3D DWG settings inside project manager. So let's look at the options. Then navigate to project manager and project setup. Let's come down to our Plant 3D drawing settings. Now we're going to take a look at layer and color settings. So look at the different options that we have here. So we can create layers and color assignments when creating objects, so a number of ways we can do this here is pipe settings. So how do we assign the layer? Typically you would want to keep your layer by line number because then you can isolate one layer and have that entire line number visible, or we have all these options. We can assign a layer to reflect any of our data fields that we might want to use. Obviously, this gets a little bit confusing. Most people would tend to stick with layer by line number. But you can also do by school number or by spec or by size. We can also choose to assign the color. In this case, we can choose the color by spec, by diameter, by status. Now, these are important or maybe more, now, these are a little bit more appropriate because if you want to highlight all blue lines are CS300, or all yellow lines are CS600, by diameter, you can set a color for every different diameter, which makes it easy to recognize the different pipe sizes. Status, is it for demolition, is it new or existing, by installation, by service, or type of line in your model, all the water lines are blue, all the natural gas lines are red, or by shop and field where all the green components are to be constructed in the shop and all the blue components are to be field construction. So having the combination of this, there's a number of different things that we can do. So for this, we're just going to keep with what we have here. So we're going to have our layer by line number and our color by diameter. So let's go back into our model and place some lines. So let's open our Plant 3D model. And we're going to look at 10 02. Now, I'm going to come up to route pipe here. So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to choose a line number for this, so I'm going to assign a new line number. And I'm going to call this line number 100. And we're going to make this line number 2 inches. And I'm going to keep it CS150, and I'm going to assign that, so we come into top view really quickly, and I'm going to just run a piece of pipe. So let's take a look at the properties on this. So it's on layer 100, and that's what we asked it. We asked to create the layer based on the line number. So let's go back and run a new line here. So I'm going to keep line number 100, but this time I'm going to run a 4-inch segment. And you can see that it's still layer 100, but the size by color is showing me a different value because we're a different size. We're 4 inches rather than 2 inches. So I'm going to keep going through and run a 6-inch. And we'll do one more. We'll run an 8-inch. Actually, we won't. We'll just stop that at six. So now we're going to go ahead and run a line number 200. And I'm going to do the same thing. Now I'm going to run this line at 2 inches and at 4 inches and at 6 inches. So now note the pattern. The layer's a little bit different. So for all three of the first ones, the layer was 100, 100, 100, and the color was different by line size. Now look at the second set. Layer 200, layer 200, layer 200. But because we set by size, the size is, the colors are the same because regardless of the line number, we just want to know the size. So now I'm going to go back and change the criteria a little bit on this. I'm going to come back to project manager, project setup. Now I'm going to change the color. Instead of by diameter, I'm going to change the color by spec. Now, I can go through and assign the values here if I want. We can do that by diameter, too. If you know that you want all the 1-inch lines to be red, we can go ahead and just make the changes here. This is just regular AutoCAD at this point. So I'm going to go back and change this to spec. And I'm going to say, 150, we'll keep that as is. 150 lines are red, and CS300s are yellow. So now I'm going to see, okay. Now take a look at what happened. Because all these lines were run at CS150, the color representation changed. So now if we hover over here, you'll see we're still showing the same layer, 100, 100. Now I'm going to just come back and change something here. I'm going to run a new line at, I'm going to make it a new line number. I'll make this one 300. And I'm going to say 2 inches here. And I'm going to run a piece of pipe. Now I'm going to come back and change this to 4 inches and 6-inch. So hopefully you can see the patterns that we have here. They're all going to be different layers. These are all going to be layer 300 now. And the color has been set by spec. So all the CS300 lines are yellow, and all the CS150 lines are red. So by having the ability to change the combination of layers and colors and to set the criteria by any of the applicable data fields, it's pretty easy to create your plant models to your client's standards. If you're not turning over the models as a deliverable, then you can feel free to absolutely set these as you choose.

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