Out of the box, AutoCAD P&ID 2008 instruments bubbles show 2 lines of text, the instrument TYPE and the instrument NUMBER.
A common request is to change this so the AREA also shows. In just a few minutes you can setup a project to do this – either by user request on specific instrument bubbles, or on all bubbles automatically. I’m going to set up my bubbles so the area shows about the bubble like this
There are actually several ways to do this, I’m going to show you the one I like the best. First, you need to make a new annotation that retrieves the AREA.
- With your project open in P&ID, open project setup by typing Editproject on the command line.
- Navigate to the General Instruments Symbols Node in the P&ID Object Definitions tree.
- In the annotation group on the lower right, press Add Annotation...
- Name this Annotation AREA. Don't worry about correcting the Block name, the software will take care of that.
- Also, set Auto insert? to Auto Insert, set Offset X to 0, and set Y to 0.3500 (the XY offsets are how far from the center to the bubble the AREA text will be.)
- Set Press OK to close the Symbol Setting dialog box.
- Now pick EDIT BLOCK… to edit the annotation.
- You want to edit the block so that it is a attribute reading #(TargetObject.Area) and centered on 0,0, similar to what is shown here.
- Save you changes and and close the block editor.
Almost done - now you need to decide – do you want the area to show up only when you ask for it on certain bubbles, or do you want the area to automatically appear on all instrument bubbles as they are created? If you only want to see it when you ask for it, you are done. Whenever you want to see the area show on a bubble, right-click that instrument and select AREA from the annotation fly-out.
If, on the other hand, you want the area to show automatically on all general instrument bubbles as you place them, then you need to turn AREA on as the default Annotation Style Name. In project setup for the general instruments Symbols node, pick your AREA annotation from the dropdown. Press OK to exit project setup and you should be good to go. Now whenever you place a general instrument, you will see the area.
NOTE: The above is for setting the area to show for all GENERAL INSTRUMENT bubbles. If you also want to show the AREA for the Inline instruments, you need to do something similar for the inline instrument object definitions. Although you need to add TargetObject.Area to the existing annotation Field Mounted Discrete Instrument instead of making a new one.
PS: I'm in Washington DC at the P3 event co-located with EcoBuild Fall and AEC-ST Fall this week. I've a P&ID talk (a Pecha Kucha actually) to give tomorrow so I am calling it an early night.
