Hull and Outfitting

Pipe Spool Drawings

Save PDF

Pipe Spool Drawings

Save PDF

Last UpdatedJan 22, 2026
7 minute read

All of the tasks that a user would carry out that are associated with the creation, modification, and drawing options and errors of Pipe Spool Drawings are initiated from a central Pipe Spool Drawing window which acts as a task hub.

The user must navigate to the Pipe Zone in the Design Explorer. From the main menu bar, select Pipe Fabrication > Drawings > Spool Drawings to display the Pipe Spool Drawing window.

Pipe	Displays the name of the pipe from the Design Explorer.
Spool	Displays the name of the spool.
Fab Check Status	Displays the fab check status - ‘valid or needs to be released’.
Drawing Name	The drawing name displayed is the assigned drawing name from Draft or Outfitting Draft. Note: The drawing name is defined by a naming rule in the Naming Rule File on the Drawing Options tab.
Revision	Displays how many revisions of the drawing are available. Each time a drawing is recreated, the existing drawing is moved to a revision registry of the same name as the current registry with the text ‘_Revisions’ added. The software then finds the latest numeric revision number and increments the new drawing revision accordingly. Pipe sketches have a REVI element added to provide revision details. If a template does not have REVI element, if so, the software utilizes existing REVI’s or adds new ones as required.
Spool Type	Displays the spool type of selected pipe spool (SHOP, FITT or SITE).
Drawing Status	Displays the status of the preview files by comparing the plot file date with the actual drawing in the system. If the drawing and the preview are compatible, the Drawing Status column is populated with the date and time the drawing was last updated. Note: If a drawing has been updated in Draft/Outfitting Draft (for example: manual additions). The comparison reveals that the drawing is now newer than its corresponding plot file. In this instance the Drawing Status would be out of date.

Create Drawing

The Create Drawing tab contains a list of available spools that displays the currently selected pipe spools together with the drawing status.

Note:
A spool is only displayed in the Pipe Spool Drawing window as requiring an update if it has changed.

Add CE	Identifies the currently selected element as the working element.
Create Drawing	Creates a Pipe Spool Drawing from the selected spools in the list of available spools.
Refresh	Refreshes the Pipe Spool Drawing window.
Open Drawing	Select the check box to open the drawing when it has been created.
Show Previous Version	Select the check box to open previous version of the drawing. (If the drawing has multiple revisions, the previous preview file and database drawing is stored to enable a comparison of the old and new drawing).
Show Spool Dimension	Select the check box to open the drawing when it has been created.

Deleting a Spool in the Model

In the event that a spool is deleted in the model, the deleted spool and associated drawing is represented in the Pipe Spool Drawing window as follows:

The associated drawings can be deleted using the functionality available from the Create Drawing right click menu.

Creates drawings in PLANT and outputs a preview file so drawings can be viewed without changing modules. The preview drawings are saved to a user definable directory and their status are shown on the pipe sketch drawing window. Right clicking on a selected spool within the grid displays a right click menu:

Navigate Spool on Explorer	Navigate to the selected spool in the Design Explorer.
Zoom-in Selected Spool in 3D View	Zoom to the selected spool in the 3D view.
Update Selected Preview Plots	Updates the selected preview plots.
Delete Selected Orphaned Drawings	Deletes the currently selected orphaned drawings. Note: Where a spool has been deleted after a drawing has been created, the old drawing is marked as ‘orphaned’ and can be selected for deletion.
Remove Selected	Removes the selected spool from the Pipe Spool Drawing window.
Remove All	Removes all the spools from the Pipe Spool Drawing window.
Select All	Selects all the spools in the Pipe Spool Drawing window.
Unselect All	Unselects all the spools in Pipe Spool Drawing window.
Print Selected Drawing	Prints the selected pipe spool drawing.
Print Preview With Current List	Previews the pipe spool drawing to be printed along with the current spool list.
Export From List to Excel	Saves the excel files and the current spool list.
Show Filter	Filters the spool list displayed in the Pipe Spool Drawing window with the Create Drawing tab selected.

Pipe Spool Drawing Comparison

Select the Show Previous Version check box to view the current plot file alongside the previous version in separate windows to identify what has changed in the appropriate viewer.

The plot file name reflects the name of the drawing and the spool name. The software checks if the plot file date coincides with the last change to the drawing and a warning is displayed stating the plot file is out of date.

Note:
In Outfitting the format id pdf (adobe Acrobat), in Outfitting the format is TIFF (Windows Photo Viewer or Paint).

Drawing Options

The Drawing Options tab allows you to define the options for the drawing.

Dept. Name	Enter a name to be used for the Department (ISODEP) element.
Regi. Name	Enter a name for the Registry (ISOREG) element.
Using DESI Hierarchy	Select the check box to use the zone and site elements, in the Design Explorer, as the Dept. Name and Regi. Name. elements for the created pipe spool drawing.
Maximum Saved Revisions	Displays the number of maximum saved revisions (for reference purposes). This functionality is an automatic drawing revision stored in Draft to keep old drawing copies for reference purposes. When a drawing has been updated the previous drawing is moved to a revision registry and renamed with a name containing the original name plus the current revision number. Note: It is possible to store a large number of revisions, however it is recommended to keep one previous version (default).
Naming Rule File Path	Displays the file path for the naming rule file, you can navigate to a different location. The naming rule file can consist of:
Result File Path	Displays the file path for the created pipe spool drawing. You can navigate to a different location. Use the plot file directory to keep all the files for a particular registry in one place. Previous versions and iso underlays are stored in two directories below this called cache and iso respectively. Note: If the drawing templates are used using Isodraft plotfiles the iso directory stores the underlays.
ISO Template Path	Select a drawing template from the drop-down list.
Drawing Type	Select a drawing type from the drop-down list. The format and sheet size for determined for the created pipe spool drawing.
Preview	A preview of the drawing displays on the right side of the Pipe Spool Drawing window.

Error List

The Error List tab displays any errors encountered during the creation of the pipe spool drawing. To display the error list, select the Error List tab.

Delete Drawings

Deleted drawing elements are not deleted automatically to allow them to be checked, each time the Pipe Spool Drawing window is displayed, an automatic check is made for deleted drawings and added to the bottom of the list displayed in the window.

Drawing Name Rule Changes

The existing mechanism for pipe spool drawings has been found to cause anomalies in the correlation between PSPOOL names and their corresponding pipe sketches. The default pipe sketch naming rule has been changed to include the spool name rather than the pipe name.

This is necessary to avoid confusion between the spool name and the spool sequence. For example, on a two spool pipe a set of flanges in the middle of existing spool 1 could be added.

PSPOOL 1/2MZ-HP0901/PS/001
PSPOOL 3/2MZ-HP0901/PS/002

Using the default auto naming the new spool would be named as spool number 3 but its sequence in the list of pspools would be 2. So the members list would now be as follows:

1 PSPOOL 1/2MZ-HP0901/PS/001
2 PSPOOL 2/2MZ-HP0901/PS/003
3 PSPOOL 3/2MZ-HP0901/PS/002.

Using the old drawing naming rule, the drawing names would be evaluated as:

DRWG 1/MAR-Psketch_Zone-/2MZ-HP0901/001
DRWG 2/MAR-Psketch_Zone-/2MZ-HP0901/002
DRWG 3/MAR-Psketch_Zone-/2MZ-HP0901/003.]

It should be, this uses the sequence of the PSPOOL in the PSLIST instead of the actual spool name so drawing names become inconsistent with the spool names:

DRWG 1/MAR-Psketch_Zone-/2MZ-HP0901/001
DRWG 2/MAR-Psketch_Zone-/2MZ-HP0901/003
DRWG 3/MAR-Psketch_Zone-/2MZ-HP0901/002.

Upgrading from SP4 drawings

In essence the processes remain the same, in PDMS the file format has changed from PDMS.plt format to Adobe pdf format and the storage directories have been consolidated.

To upgrade an existing project, the plot file directory needs to be specified and the plot files regenerated.

To enable existing drawings to be maintained, a drawing renaming process needs to take place as previously described. After this the plot files may be regenerated in the new file locations.

Hull and Outfitting