AutoCAD Drafting Guidelines

In order for the upgrade procedure to run as smoothly as possible, it is recommenced that the following guidelines be followed when drafting the AutoCAD drawings to be upgraded:

• Use different layers for primary pipeline and secondary pipelines, e.g. draft all primary pipelines on the "MAJOR" layer and all secondary pipelines on the "MINOR" layer.

• All blocks should be placed with their respective names, not only on the drawing but also in the project. Avoid different names for a single block, as will commonly happen if CTRL+C and CTRL+V are used for copying block information. A block should be unique for a project: avoid duplicate block definitions.

• Use a block scale of "1". Symmetrical blocks with their widths in whole numbers are ideal as this makes the automatic port upgrade procedure (the adding ports to symbol) more efficient, and thus less effort is required subsequently, adding ports to symbols manually.

• Information for components such as Pipes, Instruments, and Valves etc can either come from attributed text or from plain text in the right format. For example, dumb text such as "10-A-250" can be used to create a pipe tag in P&ID using the associate text facility. This information can also come from attribute definitions in AutoCAD attached to the block. In this case, the Attribute Mapping facility can be used to create tags.

• Equipment should be placed on the "EQUIP" layer.

• Equipment components should be placed on the "EQPT" layer.

• Piping components and inline instruments should be placed on the "PID" layer.

• Offline instruments should be placed on the "INST" layer.

• Connections to process lines should be placed on the "LINK" layer.

• Electrical and pneumatic lines should be placed on the "ELEC" layer.

• Capillary lines should be placed on the "CAPILLARY" layer.

• Software lines should be placed on the "SOFT" layer.

• Attributed text information shall be placed on the "ATT-TEXT" layer.

• Use a different layer for each type of component.

• Snap should be set to "On".

• The lines or polylines that represent a single pipe should be drawn in the same direction (e.g. left to right).

• The drawing of leader lines for instrument label balloons is recommended.