Plant 3D 2018: New Features

By Justin Doughty

Autodesk have now released the 2018 version of AutoCAD Plant 3D, along with all of the updates from 2017, this includes several new features listed below.

Cloud collaboration for Plant Projects - You can share your projects in the cloud and invite others to work collaboratively on your project:

This gives a new Collaboration tab with tools, and also changes the Project Manager:

Instrumentation support - Piping Designers are now able to work with Instrumentation in models as the Spec Editor is adding support for Instrumentation. This allows editing and creation of Catalogs and specs with Instrumentation to be much more straightforward:

Project Backup - On any Plant 3D project (SQLite, SQL server, Vault, Collaboration), you can save a local backup of the entire project complete with SQLite database. This could be used to move a Vault project to a Cloud Collaboration project for example.

Project Manager Search - Full project drawing search to help drafters and designers get to their drawings faster:

Simplified Xrefing of Project Drawings - Project Drawings can quickly be Xrefed into the current drawing directly from the Project Manager. It works for normal, Vault and Collaboration projects:

Off Page Connector Improvements in P&ID - Supports connecting Instrumentation (signal) lines. Supports connecting lines within the same drawing:

Disconnect Markers drips - These have changed from 2D graphics to 3D and the orientation of the drips is now always "down" as they used to display sideways on vertical pipes:

Create and Get Started tabs - These sections have been updated to include selections for Plant 3D and P&ID workspaces with specific information about each one: