Creating Electrical drawings from 3-D piping and Civil structure drawings.

[muck]

My company is are starting to create Electrical plan drawings in 3-D models created by

the Civil and Piping Departments. Most of the steel structures created in Civil and piping

need to be use as backgrounds for our Electrical Drawings as x-references.

Our Electrical equipment, circuits and conduits need to stand out in our drawings.

 

What is the best method to accomplish this.

 

1. Should we fade layers to accomplish this or should we use Visual Styles. Maybe we

need to both. What is best practice?

 

2. Piping uses a program called CADWrox to create piping. Is there any type of software

add-on that we might help us produce Electrical drawings form 3-D models.

 

Thank you,

[RobDraw]

Are you using a .stb or .ctb?

 

For 2D, I would just apply a shading to the layers/colors. I don't do 3D in AutoCAD so if there is a better way for 3D then I'll leave that for someone who does work with it.

[mikekmx]

i do all my ductwork drawings in 3D now. so much easier than 2D when you get used to it.

mainly they look very good, very clearly read. Sometimes not. The duct is big though..... i can't imagine cables being too clear in a 3D drawing.

 

(drawing duct is easy..... i draw a polyline, radius the corners appropriately, then use a lisp called 'pipe' or 'tube' (easily found with a search) and bosh - it's all 3D duct. would be the same for cables i guess. assuming the cable was all the same diameter, i expect a lisp could be created that will do all the radiusing & duct creation with 1 click)

[RobDraw]

I do 3D ductwork in Revit. It is the cat's meow and I've only scratched the surface.

 

Electrical in 3D doesn't usually involve actually modeling the wires. It's usually the objects that house the wires, conduit, cable tray. etc. The wiring connections are usually done virtually and not necessarily shown on plans in a way that resembles the real world if at all. Circuiting can be done with annotation. If it is shown then it's basically linework that represents the connection, not the actual routing of the wires.

[muck]

We will mostly be doing Cable Trays in 3-D on structure and piping models created by the

Civil & piping departments. The piping department uses CAD Wrox.

This is for the Chemical industry.

 

We use a 4 pin rotation system in which pin 1 is the lightest, Pen 4 it the darkest.

We use ctb files.

 

 

Thank you,

[RobDraw]

So, set up some colors in your .ctb to have shading.

 

Please put what version of AutoCAD you are using into your profile, this will help with suggesting any available alternative solutions.

[SLW210]

I moved your thread to the AutoCAD Drawing Management & Output Forum.

 

Please try to post in an appropriate Forum, seems you are always posting your questions in AutoCAD General.