To the delight of extreme pipers and plant design professionals around the world (including myself as a former process plant designer), the AutoCAD Plant 3D 2012, AutoCAD P&ID 2012 and  Autodesk Plant Design Suite 2012 have just been announced.

The Autodesk Plant Design Suite 2012 comes in Standard, Premium and the Ultimate edition which would now include Revit Structure and Autodesk Inventor.

Key components of Autodesk Plant Design Suite 2012, which are all part of the Ultimate edition also referred to as the “whole enchilada” or “candy store” by me, include:

• AutoCAD 2012 for general drafting, design and layout
• AutoCAD P&ID 2012 for piping and instrumentation design, featuring improved symbol library management and better support for mixed metric projects
• AutoCAD Plant 3D 2012 for 3D modeling and documentation of piping, featuring enhanced AutoCAD isometrics and customizable report creation
• AutoCAD Structural Detailing 2012 for drafting and editing structural details
• Autodesk Revit Structure 2012 for 3D modeling of structural components
• Autodesk Inventor 2012 for Digital Prototyping of plant equipment and skids
• Autodesk Navisworks Simulate 2012 for model aggregation, visualization, and simulation
• Autodesk Navisworks Manage 2012 for clash detection
• Autodesk Showcase 2012 for showing interactive presentations
• Autodesk SketchBook Designer 2012 for design illustration and graphic communication

With AutoCAD Plant 3D you can create not only 3D models plant equipment and piping but the Isometrics and P&IDs.

Press Announcement: http://bit.ly/nT0pBi  

“Today’s compressed timelines and tighter budgets mean cooperation on every process level is more important, yet more difficult to realize. The latest edition of Plant Design Suite was specifically developed with multidisciplinary coordination in mind,” said Mark Strassman, vice president, Autodesk Construction & Plant. “With Autodesk Inventor, Autodesk Revit Structure, AutoCAD Plant 3D and Autodesk Navisworks Manage now all part of the suite, Autodesk provides the best of AutoCAD, the best of BIM, and the best of digital prototyping solutions for a more streamlined workflow—all in one package.”

A few of the larger new things in AutoCAD Plant 3D 2012 and AutoCAD P&ID 2012:

Items with a * are for both P&ID and Plant 3D

• *MS SQL Server and SQL Server Express support
• *New Report Creator
• AutoCAD Isometrics
• Piping performance improvements – particularly with orthos.
• Cadworx and Autoplant spec conversion
• and more

There are 30 day full trial versions available for AutoCAD Plant 3D 2012 and AutoCAD P&ID 2012 available for download in many regions. Free Trial.

Also check out the Plant Exchange Community if you are in the plant design industry. You are likely to run into Extreme Piping like those in Project X and their video shown at Autodesk University 2010.

Project X Video on YouTube 
http://autocad.autodesk.com/?nd=projectxvideoyoutube

“A plant model completed in 2 weeks using the Autodesk Plant Design Suite, Autodesk Buzzsaw, and Autodesk 3ds Max by a team of 15 industry experts from the Dave Tyner Digital Plant Design Community.

The project included 40+ P&IDs, 13 3D models, 9400+ piping components, 4900+ structural items, 300+ pieces of equipment, 2000+ instruments, 14 ortho's, and 124 iso's.”

Cheers,
Shaan
Former Pi’d Piper

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