AutoCAD P&ID 2009 Custom Data Manager Views

I'm just back from solstice camping in the central Sierra Nevada mountains, where I survived an encounter with a rattlesnake and 20+ hours of techno music.  Two days later I'm pretty much recovered from the weekend, so I figured I'd write a geeky post (unlike all those previous posts).  So, lets discuss Custom Data Manager Views. 

Out of the box, Data Manager shows a tree view on the left that displays an inventory of everything drawn in that Drawing.  The right panel shows details for items in the selected node in the tree.

 

Alternatively, you can view everything drawn in that Project if you pick the project view from Data Manager's dropdown list

Right, so that plus some reports is what is available "out of the box".  But more than a few of you have asked for a different way of organizing the tree view.  We've had requests to group the tree view by Area, or by Supplier, or by some other field.  So for the 2009 release of AutoCAD P&ID, we added a Custom Data Manager Views feature.

Let's say you wanted to see the tree view by Supplier.  First, you need to set up the view.  This is done in Project Setup, which you get to by selecting Properties... from the Project node right-click context menu in Project Manager. (Don't ask me why it says Properties when it launches a dialog called Project Setup.  Although I think that is partially my fault from the hectic first release days of 2 years ago.  Maybe we'll get around to changing that next release.) 

In Project Setup, you need to:

1. Select the Data Manager Configuration node. 
2. Once there, you click the Create View button. 
3. Enter a Name and the Scope of the view.  Scope is either Drawing Data or Project Data.  I'm going to name my view Supplier List and give it a Project Data scope.
4. Press the New Level... button to define the top level of the new view's tree

The New Level... button brings up a Select Class Property dialog box.  Next, you pick the property that defines the top level of your tree.  I'm selecting the Supplier property, then pressing OK to close this dialog.

I'm going to put a second level into my tree of ClassName by selecting the New Level... button again, and picking Class Name from the property list.  Now my Project Setup looks like this:

It's that easy!  Press OK to close Project Setup.  Now, in Data Manager, you will see your new view called Supplier List.  Selecting this view, entering values for Supplier into grid in the right side of Data Manager, and selecting the Refresh icon will now show your project inventory tree grouped by the Supplier and sub grouped by Class.

 

Recap: you can use the Data Manager tree to group by any property.  Coupled with the ability to add properties to any class, you can get the AutoCAD P&ID 2009 Data Manager to display all sorts of custom data views.  And yes, you can export and import these custom views to/from Microsoft Excel just like the out-of-box views.