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Hello. I’m Richard Frank, Software Engineer with Autodesk Plant Solutions.
In this video, we introduce the AutoCAD Plant 3D Catalog Builder. Like the Spec Editor,
the Catalog builder creates piping catalogs. However, the catalog builder is designed to
help you create many components at once, rather than create one component at a time.
You create catalogs in three steps. First you create a template, which defines the component
type and size ranges. Next we enter size detail using Microsoft
Excel. And finally we add the components to a new or existing catalog.
Let’s get started by creating a Sample template. When we first create a template, the template
is empty so there are no components displayed. To add a component we first choose a Category,
select a component type, and click New to add the part family.
I’ll add an Elbow. We have a choice of shapes here. I’ll select a CPB Bend parametric
graphic. And then specify the pressure class. And add
a description for the part family. For the purpose of this demonstration, We
are going straight into Excel and take a look at the size detail.
Click Export to Excel. Create the spreadsheet. As a shortcut I’m going to click again just
to get a quick way to open the spreadsheet.
Here we have a size range of 4, 5, and 6 inches. You can click on the Preview image to get
dimension detail. You can also get description descriptions
by hovering over the comments (the little red triangle in each of the dimension cells).
You can see that the description, units, end type, and nominal size range are provided.
Now, a reason that I wanted to quickly jump into Excel with just this one component is
to show you a few things that are not provided, such as the outside diameter.
I would like to get outside diameter from the template, and set a different size range.
We click Settings. And here we can set some defaults for new
part families. Here we set the pressure class for any new
elbows that we might create to 300 pounds. You can calculate Long descriptions from long
description styles. These are the same description styles that
are used in the Spec Editor. But what I want to show you is in the advanced
default settings dialog. These settings provide defaults for different sizes,
when you create the spreadsheet (such as outside diameter). What I want to do here is to provide
the Outside Diameter for 1, 4, and 12 inches. And exclude the other sizes within that range.
I’m using the arrow key and hitting space to clear these check boxes.
Let’s close the settings dialogs and head back into the template.
So far in this video, we have added one component: an elbow, using parametric graphics. I want
to add another parametric component. But this time I want to show you something
that you cannot do in the Spec Editor. I want to create a Tee shaped strainer. In
the Miscellaneous Category select Strainer. The shape that we want is not available by
default, but I know from the Tees that the shape name is CPTB.
So with a quick type-in of CPTB, we can select a Tee shape from the list.
The template now has two parametric components, an elbow and a strainer.
Now we will add a block-based valve to the template. Before you can use AutoCAD blocks
you need to add port information using the plantpartconvert command. To learn more about
plantpartconvert, please watch the Spec Editor Part 3 Video.
Here we selecting the DWG, and then specify the number of ports. I’m also going to set
the size range to just 4”. Before we create the Excel spreadsheet, we
want to set the Strainer and the Elbow to use the size defaults that we specified in
the Advanced Settings dialog earlier in this video. For the Elbow,
we set the upper size to 12” and select Use Custom Size list.
And do the same for the Strainer. Now we are ready to export our three part families to
Excel. And open the spreadsheet.
Here we overwrite the XLS file we created earlier.
For the block based component, we select the block name for our one size.
Here we see 3 sheets, one for each family. One tip I recommend is to paste zeros into
the dimension cells to start. Dimensions that have a zero frequently indicate a default
value. From our advanced default settings dialog,
we have outside diameters available. We can copy and paste the OD values into the dimensions
column. Reviewing the comments column, we see that zero defaults can be used for D2
and D3. We will paste in the Nominal diameter for the length.
I’ll stick with the defaults for everything else.
For the elbow we will assign a value for diameter and angle.
And again use the default for everything else (although later we will see I probably should
have entered something for the radius).
We have now assigned the dimensions, but before we save the Excel worksheet and create the
catalog, I wanted to show you how to use formulas to
create a size description. You can also use a Long Description Style
to assign descriptions. But formulas can be quite useful for the descriptions
and more complicated dimensions. We’ll =Concatenate(J2, " ", B2) and then
copy and paste to the whole column. Now we save the spreadsheet.
So far in this video we have created a catalog builder template, added size detail in Excel,
and now we can create the catalog.
Back in the Catalog Builder, click Build Catalog. Select the XLS file we just saved.
After some validation the Build Catalog dialog displays and we can save as new catalog file.
Navigate to the content folder, and save a new sample PCAT catalog.
And there we have it. We have a new AutoCAD Plant 3D catalog.
For the remainder of this video we will look at the new components in the spec editor,
add them to a spec, and see what they look like in the model.
We’ll also show you how to use the plantsnapshot command to create preview images.
Here we load the spec editor, and open the Sample PCAT catalog. Here is our elbow.
Now in the Spec Editor we will open CS300. Select the Sample Catalog, and add these new
components to the spec. I did not add size description in the catalog,
but you can use the Spec Editor to set descriptions either in the catalog editor or the spec sheet.
Let us set this one to a tee strainer description. And for the block based component, we will
call this the Custom Valve.
Let’s save the spec and load AutoCAD Plant 3D to take a look at the model.
So far in this video we have created three components using catalog builder and added
them to CS300 using the spec editor. Now we open a model drawing and from the dynamic
piping palette we can insert the block based valve.
We will add the missing preview image in a moment.
I should point out another tip. You do not need to insert each part, or even add the
parts to the spec to see what they look like in the model.
You can use the Preview Lisp files that get created when the catalog is built.
Here we load the lisp file for the strainer. And we can see both sizes that we created.
These are preview blocks, not spec parts.
The last thing we will do in this video is create the missing preview image.
We can create preview images using the plantsnapshot command.
We will run the command, and then specify that we want 200x200 images.
To create snapshots for the entire catalog, we choose R for repository, and select a Catalog
file. Then specify a folder to put the preview images
in. Here we create a folder named 200 underneath
the catalog. After plantsnapshot completes, we can take
a look at the preview images. Here we have a…
super-short radius elbow, the strainer, and the block based valve.
Back in the modeler, we reload the spec by switching briefly to a different spec.
Now we can see that the preview image displays in the dynamic tool palette.
And that completes this Video where we have used the catalog builder to create a piping
catalog. Thank you for watching.