Spec Driven Project

It is completely logical and natural to start modeling a process plant from the P&ID diagram. Once the diagram is finished and aligned, mechanical engineers can begin placing and connecting the equipment.

One of my favorite approaches in 3D modeling is using the PLANTPIDLINELIST command.

You can find it in the 3D Piping workspace, on the Part Insertion palette. In fact, this command simply opens a palette with additional tools—and that’s where the magic happens. All process lines drawn in the P&ID drawings are displayed, and when the user clicks the Place button

Plant 3D pulls all the necessary data required for accurate tagging of the elements we are modeling. Perfectly and without errors. The same applies to valves. When we want to insert them, the software selects the valve type, size, connections, etc. from the specification, all with the purpose of preventing the user from making mistakes during manual entry.

Let’s take a look at what happens when inserting a check valve.

This is what the result looks like—and it is far from correct or expected, and definitely not in line with the previous “everything works perfectly and helps the user avoid mistakes” narrative.

We can see that most of the data has been imported correctly: size, tag, specification, and line number. The only issue is that the model itself is not a check valve. Why is that?

The answer is very simple: the check valves were not added to the 10HC01 specification.

And now we come to the point of this blog. How can a technologist creating the P&ID avoid placing something in the diagram that doesn’t exist in the specification? The answer is again very simple.

In the Project Setup, under P&ID DWG Settings → Pipe Specs in P&ID, you need to enable the option Spec Driven Project.

When this option is selected, the icons for P&ID symbols appear slightly different.

Symbols that do not have a corresponding 3D model for the selected specification receive a subtle hatch pattern in the background, indicating to the technologist that process engineers may face issues later on if the specification isn’t updated or replaced.

Also, check out our YouTube video that covers the same subject Link

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