AutoCAD Plant 3D

What do you like best?

P&ID module: Autoplant ensures that there is no double tagging for valves or lines. Automatic line breaks at crossing lines. Possibility to make client specific tool pallettes.

3D: slope adjustment for piping is really intuitive and works great.

Integration of 3D scans in the model. The possibilty to 'cut' the pointcloud in the drawing itself is really nice. Before I had to use a second program to control the 3D pointcloud.

A lot of different designers can work on one project. We can split the project in small pieces and use xref to connect to the adjacent piece.

Integration of the drawings in navisworks for 3D reviewing.

It's really easy to integrate 3D blocks from suppliers in our 3D model.

What do you dislike?

If one of my designers is active in the project, I can't change anything the project manager module. Would like that to be changed.

Isogen can fail sometimes. We use a lot of special equipments in our line of work, isogen can't handle it sometimes.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

Use plant 3D in combination with navisworks.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

Before, we were using regular autocad to design P&ID's. We spend a lot of time checking valve/ equipment tagging and line numbers. Now Autoplant ensures every tag is unique. Saving us a lot of time.

Slope is really important in our line of work. Plant 3D handles slope far better than other designing apps. We can draw much faster and have better results.

Imperial and metric changeovers are difficult sometimes.