Free at last

So it's that time of the year when finally we are free to talk about upcoming product features.   We had to wait until after the start of our World Press Day.  Autodesk hosts a press event every year this time to brief the press on the upcoming software releases.  This event always happens right around Valentines Day - guess we are trying to drum up some love?  (Although Valentines Days San Francisco-style involves things like flash mobs having pillow fights, probably not the style of attention that our marketing folks are going for.)   But as soon as the press has been briefed, then we are free to blog about all the cool features.  Nice!

I have to admit that the press is more interested in things like test driving Harmonix Music System's Rock Band (made with Autodesk software!) on the PlayStation3 here than my AutoCAD P&ID demos.  No accounting for taste I guess.  So I'm taking advantage of the lull as a chance to blog.  AutoCAD P&ID 2009 includes some enhancements that I want to highlight in the next few blogs, starting with the data side of things and Export enhancements.

Existing in AutoCAD P&ID 2008, you can look at your component data in Data Manager, and if you want you can export your data to Microsoft Excel.  Whatever data node you are currently viewing in the Data Manager is exported as a sheet in an Excel file.

In AutoCAD P&ID 2009, we've expanded this feature so that you can now export "Active node and all child nodes".  What does this mean?  Well, you can now invoke Export at the Equipment node, for example, and generate an Excel file with a worksheet showing the Equipment node data, but also worksheets showing Pumps, Tanks, Exchangers -- all the child nodes.  In AutoCAD P&ID 2008 you had to export data one node at a time and manually combine them into one Excel file.  Now AutoCAD P&ID 2009, you can do this in one step:

But wait. . .there's more! You can now specify different file formats when you enter the export file name and location.  AutoCAD P&OD 2009 supports export to XLS (the excel 97-2003 format), XLSX (the new Excel 2007 format) or a comma delimited (CSV) format.

Simple productivity enhancements, but they go a long way to make life easier.  In upcoming entries I'll talk more about importing and exporting data with AutoCAD P&ID 2009.  Right now I have to go get some afternoon chocolate before the press eats it all up.