Metric ASME Specs in AutoCAD Plant 3D

By Andy Davis

AutoCAD Plant 3D

When working on a plant design project it is quite a common requirement to use pipe specs that conform to ASME standards but are dimensioned and reported in metric units.

The standard ASME catalogs that are supplied with Plant 3D are essentially Imperial catalogs, all of the dimensions and descriptions being reported in inches.

The question is, how do I create metric pipe specs of ASME fittings without re-defining the fittings from the standard ASME catalogs?

Plant Spec Editor

The answer is to use the Layout and Settings feature of the AutoCAD Plant 3D Spec Editor.

In the Layout and Settings window, you can change the nominal size of the fittings in a spec to display the units you require.  You can select Metric units for the CS150 pipe spec, for example.

By selecting a value from the Long description (size) style: list, you can update the descriptions of the fittings in the spec. When you click Ok or Apply, the size descriptions are updated to use the selected units and are saved to the current spec.

In this example, I have opened the CS150 pipe spec, created a new spec from it called CS150-Metric, and then changed the Layout and Settings as described above.

The result is an ASME pipe spec displaying metric units.

The following example shows the results of using this pipe spec in a metric project: