Smart 3D Connections

Hi Donnie, the software does not track connections in 3D LAYOUT mode.
What information would you like to be reported? Is it essentially a bill of materials? I assume creating a construction drawing showing only the items within a named group does not meet your needs.
Are you expecting to select a starting device and an ending device and have the software report what is in between? Or would the ability to filter a report on a selection set be acceptable?

Hi Donnie, the software does not track connections in 3D LAYOUT mode.
What information would you like to be reported? Is it essentially a bill of materials? I assume creating a construction drawing showing only the items within a named group does not meet your needs.
Are you expecting to select a starting device and an ending device and have the software report what is in between? Or would the ability to filter a report on a selection set be acceptable?

Yes we are trying to track a circuit within the station. So I would like to go from Line coming in to Line going out and only see what is on that circuit. I wanted to see if that was tracked somewhere but if not then we have to come up with a way to attribute so we can filter a report I am assuming.

Yes, you could filter a report on some common value between the items, Installation, Location, Detailed_Description1, etc.

To clarify, the information you want to see is the information seen on the bill of material reports supplied with the software and construction drawings are not an acceptable solution?

Yes.  Here is some comments from the requestor:

“AEP would like to generate a report for all current-carrying, high-voltage elements in the 3D model.  The report would need to include:

1. The unique attributes of each item (ID#, Name, CID#…..)

2. A listing of all the adjacent item(s) to that item

In English, the report would be equivalent to Who am I and what are my properties, and who am I connected to?.  

The report would be run globally on the model, so not necessary specific to a certain item, but rather on the model as a whole.  So it would look similar to a BOM for the station, but I can see where it may not be a one row to one item correlation since items can be connected to more than one adjacent item.  It would also require different fields in the columns than a BOM.”

I may need some more information on how to do this with a construction drawing but I think it may not be the way we want to do it.  But if it can produce what we would like to see then I won't rule it out.

Can you provide any information with respect to why this functionality is being requested/what it is used for? This may help steer the development of a new tool.

Why is the 3D model being used as the source or interface to get the "what is connected to what" information, as opposed to a single line diagram or schematic? Is it because the 3D layout and schematic design is done by different departments?

"The unique attributes of each item" is in the form of symbol text and parts database data, correct?

The software will need a means of filtering out other elements from the "current-carrying, high-voltage elements" in the layout. Are you already using attributes on the symbols that could be used for this purpose? If not, it might be necessary to add such an attribute to all relevant symbols.

This may need to be a phone conversation but I will try to explain the best I can. We run a check on each circuit of our system to find the "Most Limiting Series Element" (MLSE). This is not a check on the entire model but only on what is in a single circuit. We would like to be able to run reports on just capturing those items. There are attributes attached that identify properties. The problem with using a schematic style mode for this is that they do not have the level of detail that a 3D model has. For instance on a single line we show one line between two peices of equipment but that line might be 12 cables in the 3D model. In our report for the MLSE we need to know every single part in the circuit down to the connectors. Maybe we can set up a conference call for this one so we can all understand the goal.