New Features in Autodesk® AutoCAD® Plant 3D® 2018
Autodesk® AutoCAD® Plant 3D® 2018 contains the following new features and enhancements.
Cloud collaboration for Plant Projects - You can share your projects in the cloud and invite others to work collaboratively on your project. For more information, see Collaboration.
Instrumentation support - Piping Designers are now able to work with Instrumentation in models as the Spec Editor is adding support for Instrumentation. This allows editing and creation of Catalogs and specs with Instrumentation to be much more straightforward.
Project Backup - On any Plant 3D project (SQLite, SQL server, Vault, Collaboration), you can save a local backup of the entire project complete with SQLite database. This could be used to move a Vault project to a Cloud Collaboration project for example. See To Backup your Collaboration Project.
Project Manager Search - Full project drawing search to help drafters and designers get to their drawings faster. See To Search in the Project Manager.
Simplified Xrefing of Project Drawings - Project Drawings can quickly be Xrefed into the current drawing directly from the Project Manager. It works for normal, Vault and Collaboration projects.
Off Page Connector Improvements in P&ID - Supports connecting Instrumentation (signal) lines. Supports connecting lines within the same drawing.
Disconnect Markers drips - These have changed from 2D graphics to 3D and the orientation of the drips is now always "down" as they used to display sideways on vertical pipes.
Create and Get Started tabs - These sections have been updated to include selections for Plant 3D and P&ID workspaces with specific information about each one.
Create tab
P&ID Get Started tab
Integration of the Autodesk AutoCAD Plant 3D 2017.1 Enhancements
The following features in the Autodesk AutoCAD Plant 3D 2017.1 Enhancements have been integrated into AutoCAD Plant 3D 2018.
Spec Driven P&ID - The Spec Driven P&ID feature allows the P&ID to lookup/reference the Plant 3D Spec files so that a P&ID drafter will know if objects in their P&ID are "in spec" (found in the pipe spec) or "out of spec" (aka "off spec" - not found in the pipe spec). For more information, see Workflow: Spec Driven P&ID.
Updated Functionality and Content
- Multiple updates were implemented to correct skewed pipe being represented incorrectly in the drawing. Now Isometrics show offset triangles (skews), triangle boxes and related dimensions and annotations correctly. For more information of skewed pipe, see To set indicators for sloped and offset piping.
Additional Isometrics Updates
- Several isometric improvements have been implemented for this update. Also included are all the fixes in the Plant 3D 2017 Service Pack 1.
AutoCAD
AutoCAD Features AutoCAD New Features Overview.