I will be walking you through setting up the import and export settings so that we can both extract your data and import it back in.

Here are the steps to setup a custom import/export so that engineers can modify your line list.

• Create a new Import/Export Mapping
• Export the Data
• Modify The Data
• Import Using the Data Mapping

Create a New Import/Export Mapping

From inside of AutoCAD Plant 3D or AutoCAD P&ID go to your Project Manager and open up your Project Setup.

While inside the Project Setup window.  Expand either P&ID DWG Settings or Plant 3D DWG Settings.  I will be selecting the P&ID DWG Settings but you can follow the same steps for the Plant 3D DWG Settings. Click on the Export and Import Settings.  Then on the right-hand side click on NEW.

This will bring up the New Export and Import Settings Dialogue window.  Give it a Name and Description.

Next select your P&ID Classes.  For mine I am selecting the PipeLineGroup.

Once you have your P&ID classes selected then you can move over to the External Data Mapping window.  You will see the External Class Name and the Properties for this in the window.  You simply select the check box to select to deselect and of the properties.  Additionally, If you are wanting to map from or to another program you can select the Value Mapping cell and tell it what the cell is in P&ID and the name in the alternative program.

Once you have this done you can click OK, then apply and shutdown the Project Setup.

Export the Data

The next step will be to open your Data Manager inside of Plant3D/P&ID.  It is on the Home Tab, Project Panel if you are not sure where it is.  Once open you need to click the Export button.

Once the export window is open you will need to Select your export settings and select the Export settings we created earlier.  In my case, it is called P&ID Line Group Data.  Once done you will need to select the save location for the .xls file and the name you want it saved at.  By default, it attempts to put this file in your documents folder.  You can change this here if you would like.  Click ok to export your file.

Modify the Data

Use Excel to open your new file from your save location.  You should see only the properties that you selected in the export file inside of this file.

At this point you can change the information in the cells if you would like and save the file for use in an import later.

Import The Data

Back inside of your Plant3D or P&ID inside of the Data Manager you can select import.

This will open the Import from window.  Select the file you created, modified and saved for this.  Once you tell it to open you will get the Import Data Window.  Be sure and select the proper Import settings from the pull down.  Again, in my case it is called P&ID Line Group Data.  Click Ok.

Once you have done this you will see the Cells that have changed be highlighted in yellow.  You will also notice you can now accept or reject each change one by one by using the now highlighted accept or reject buttons.  Alternatively, you can accept all or reject all as well.

I hope this information help you along your journey inside of AutoCAD Plant 3D and AutoCAD P&ID.

One tool we put into Fasttrack Plant aids in the import/export of data with Excel.  Today we are going to start a series looking at the advantages of our Import/Export to with Excel.  We have some more ideas of how to make the tool more powerful, so this workflow may change as it enhances.

Because most engineer’s and designers are comfortable spending a lot of time in Excel, we think it makes sense to make tools that let them stay in Excel as much as possible.  Also, we lower the cost of development and the cost of licensing if you just have to pay to import the data, and not for a separate application to work with the data.

Also, Excel is REALLY powerful.  With the tools in Excel, you can already link it to several different databases which extends the import/export capabilities to Plant 3d even further.  Let’s get into some details though.

The overall process is as follows:

• Export data to Excel
• Make formula changes to setup a suitable Excel template that can be re-used.
• Import/Export the data as necessary to sync with the current project and make design changes.

Export Data To Excel

We have several options for getting data to Excel, but we’ll start with the simplest, exporting from the Data Manager. Right-clicking on the data manager on a class we want (1) gives us the Export option (2). Then we can choose the export settings (3), the classes to export (4), and the location (5).

Now we have a plain Excel file with some data in it.  Note that we could also export reports from the data manager, use custom export settings, or the report creator to create a data dump. Because we’re staying high level in this post, we won’t get into the details on those topics though.

Formula Changes

Two features of our import/export process is that it recognizes Excel formulas (and doesn’t overwrite them), and that it imports behind the scenes, so every drawing doesn’t have to open.  In this example, we used a formula to populate additional service data from a spreadsheet we keep in a shared location on our network.

Set up Sync Settings

We have the ability to customize sync settings for the import/export process.  In this case, based on the selection of the Service CF, we populated the Design Pressure, Design Temperature, Operating Pressure, and Operating Temperature from a standard company spreadsheet.

Once the sync is setup, using the Import Excel button and browsing to our spreadsheet pulls the data into the project.

Today we will dig deeper in how to setup Excel to import data to/from Fasttrack. Our example will be built around a line list, since projects commonly have non-Plant 3d users like process engineers filling in that information.  As mentioned previously, I like using Excel as a basis because that gives the user more flexibility with the data source, and adds the ability to link items based on formulas.  That being the case, some advanced Excel skills are required, but relevant formulas will be documented and Excel forums are a great source of information for how to setup complex formulas.

The setup will consist of the following procedures:

• Setup base table or data source.
• Configure Excel lookups
• Use Fasttrack Plant to import the data

Setting up the base table or Data Source

Again, by setting up our foundation on Excel, your options are open to being able to use any data source that Excel can use, including SQL, Access, and a host of other source.

In this example, I setup a workbook with Service information like pressures and temperatures in my OneDrive: “OneDrive – ECAD, Inc\Applications\Plant 3d\Database Information\Service Data.xlsx”

Download a copy of the workbook used with a sheet that includes the formulas referenced here:

Obviously, this isn’t a full list of data, but it provides enough that you can see a functional implementation.

The second sheet, Sample Formulas shows how to setup the looks up to fill in the data.

For this exercise, the services workbook is setup to be the single source of data for all projects.  This way, only one workbook must be managed, and update it as needed.  In your situations, you may need a project-specific workbook, you will need to adjust to match your criteria.  From that single workbook, the plan will be to link in a data tab to any project workbooks, and then reference the data through that.

In the project workbook that started out as a line group export from the data manager (you could use a properly configured line list from the report creator as well), a Service Data worksheet was created to import the data from our master services workbook. Here’s a great article for the basic technique:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Tutorial-Import-Data-into-Excel-and-Create-a-Data-Model-4b4e5ab4-60ee-465e-8195-09ebba060bf0

With that data linked, the project spreadsheet now has the data from the external source on a tab. The master data can be updated in the project workbook at any time by clicking the refresh button in the data tab.

Configure Excel Lookups

Here’s the tedious part (but the formulas are already defined for you, so it shouldn’t be too bad). In each property that you want filled in automatically, you have to setup the formula. Let’s start with looking at hooking up the Design Temperature formula. Here’s another site’s explanation  of index match: https://www.deskbright.com/excel/using-index-match/

In this example, we have a check to see if the service column C, has a matching property in the Service Data worksheet. If there is a match, it puts in the value. If there is not a match, the Design Temperature property will stay blank.

Let’s break this down into it’s pieces.  The part responsible for the check is =IF(ISERROR(),””,INDEX…blah).  Basically, if there is an error, just use blank (“”), if there is not an error, use the successful look up.

Removing the error checking leaves us with, let’s move into the inner part of the formula, the MATCH (=MATCH($C2,ServiceData!$A$2:$A$301,0)

In this case the result is 1.  The match formula is saying find the row from the range A2 to A301 in the service data sheet (below) that matches the value given in c2 (P).

The match formula is a way to find the row that we care about!

The second part of the lookup is the index formula. To better understand index, let’s replace the match formula with the value we know is correct (1), and you’ll get this: =INDEX(ServiceData!$A$2:$E$301,1,3)

The index formula takes a range (our master data that is referenced on the Service Data sheet), looks at the row we pick (1 from the match formula), and then allows us to pick a column that has the value we care about (3), which in this case is the design temperature.

Once your formula is setup and returning the correct values, drag through the rest of the worksheet to have all the rows filled with the same formula.  The $ in front of the cell references (like $A$2:$E$301) ensures that those values don’t get incremented. $C2 will become $C3 as you drag the formula to apply to other cells.

Using Fasttrack Plant to Import the Data

The final piece is to get the data back into the Plant project.  The default AutoCAD Plant 3d import doesn’t work (AFAIK) because it doesn’t read the values from the formulas. Also, our plugin will batch import without having to open every drawing and confirm the updates which can take significant time on a large project.

The import for Fasttrack is setup in 6 steps after clicking the FT Manage > Edit Excel Sync button

1. Click the add (+) button to create a new map.
2. Fill in the description
3. Pick a sample Excel file (our project export from the data manager) and indicate whether to use the file to sync
4. Set the header row number (it will use the column names matching the data manager export.
5. Pick the import tab.
6. Enter the Class name (database table) that the data should be imported to.

When the import is setup click OK.

The you can click the Import Excel button, pick your spreadsheet, and the data will populate for your line groups!

Thanks and feel free to leave comments below.

When configuring a project to use A360 content in AutoCAD Plant 3d 2017 or 2018, your setting will not save unless there is already plant content in that folder location. If the change option is available, and you select it, you will get asked if you would like to copy content to that location.

If it is not selected, you will need to copy the content using the Spec Editor. To do so, run the spec editor as an administrator.

Then go to Tools > Modify Shared content folder.

Then you set your path to the correct cloud folder, and make sure to check the Copy all content box. Click OK.

From that point, your project will be able to be set to use your A360 content folder.

I’ve been finding little goodies all over the place in the 2018 update 1.  Today’s post is about the project recycle bin.

Now when you remove drawing from a project, you get asked to move it to the project recycle bin.  This keeps the file on the windows network, but removes it from the project tree, and prevents you from losing data unexpectedly. You can open the recycle bin to see what files are in there, and you can browse to it through ..\Project folder\Project Recycle Bin\

So, now that Autodesk has released the new Plant 3D 2021 with BIM 360 Next Gen (BIM 360 Docs) access, you are wondering what you need in order to migrate existing BIM 360 Teams Plant 3D projects to the new BIM 360 cloud platform. This tutorial will walk you through the steps to successfully migrate to BIM 360 Docs.

Requirements:

• BIM 360 Design account
• BIM 360 Account Admin privileges
• Plant 3D 2018 -2020 installed. (Needed to backup existing BIM 360 Team Plant 3D project)
• Plant 3D 2021 installed
• If collaborating with other departments (disciplines), install Desktop Connector

From BIM 360 Teams

In this section I will walk through the steps needed before sharing your Plant 3D project in BIM 360 Docs.

This may be a good time to cleanup files in the Plant 3D project such as old model and drawing files and remove any outdated or unused pipe specs.

1. Open the current version of Plant 3D (2018-2020) you’re using with BIM 360 Teams
2. In Project Manager open the Plant 3D project you want to move to BIM 360 Docs
3. Right-click on the project root folder in Project Manager and select Check Out… from the popup menu. This ensures that all configuration files, P&IDs and Models get backed up.
4. In the next dialog check all the items in the list and click on Check Out.
5. Once you have checked out the project, right-click on the project root folder again and select Create Project Backup from the popup menu.
6. Click on Change and give it another location on your local drive. I changed to a folder I created called C:\Plant 3D Projects
7. After changing backup folder select Backup Project Now.
8. Open Windows Explorer and browse to the folder location. You will see a folder with project name and date it was backed up.
9. Rename the folder to strip the date off. For example, my backup created a folder called Video Training_4_21_2020 12_32_47 PM and I renamed it to Video Training.

Take minute to browse the project folder structure and noticed that all files were included. Also, this would be a good time to say farewell to BIM 360 Teams. Unless you have addition projects still being worked in Teams.

To BIM 360 Docs

In this section I will describe the steps necessary to move your existing Plant 3D project into BIM 360 Docs.

NOTE: This section assumes that you already have a BIM 360 Design account with Admin privileges. It is also required that Plant 3D 2021 is installed to upload to the new BIM 360 platform.

Create a New Project within BIM 360

1. Open your web browser to BIM 360 Design sign-in page
2. Depending on your access level, this takes you to the Account Admin page as shown.

NOTE: If you don’t have account administration permissions, you will not be allowed to create BIM 360 projects.

3. To create a new BIM 360 project, select the Add button
4. Fill out the Project Profile, then select Save & continue. The project you are creating will be used by all departments (disciplines) working on this specific project.

Upon creating the project, you will automatically be added to the project with admin permissions. Adding additional users are covered in a different topic

5. Open Plant 3D 2021
6. Open the Plant 3D project you just renamed like you normally would open a local/network project by using Open… as shown.
7. Take a moment to notice that all the models/drawings are still part of the project
8. In order to access the Collaboration ribbon panel, open one of the drawings/models.
9. Make the Collaboration ribbon panel active
10. Select Share Project from the Plant Collaboration panel
11. Select Get Started!
12. You will receive a message stating that a drawing is still open and ask if you want to close it. Select Yes
13. The next dialog will show a list of BIM 360 project that you can share the Plant 3D project with. Highlight the BIM 360 project you created in step 4
14. Select the Upload Project button

The Plant 3D project will start uploading to BIM 360 Docs. This may take a few minutes. When upload is complete you can close the dialog or Invite additional team members to the project. I’m going to select Close.

That’s all there is to it. When finished uploading, look at the project in the Plant 3D Project Manager. Notice it now has a BIM 360 icon next to it. This is how you distinguish between a regular project versus a BIM 360 Project.

All my drawings and models carried over. Sweet!

In Plant 3D 2022, Autodesk incorporated the Iso Style Editor.  It is a nice GUI interface to manipulate the isoconfig.xml file in case you are not an XML guru.  It is located in the Project Setup and appears to only be able to be run from there… Not so fast, my friend!

The Iso Style Editor can be run without going into the Project Setup by going to: 

C:\Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2022\PLNT3D\PnPIsoConfigEditor.exe

So when the Project Setup is locked out when an admin changes the Project.xml to read-only or you would just rather not open the Project Setup dialog, you can still tweak the Isoconfig.xml thru this GUI interface if needed.

I don’t think enough love has been given to the Plant 3D Compass settings.  I would like to explain them to you in this post so you can get the most usage out of them that you can.

So these are the Compass settings found in the Home tab of the ribbon in AutoCAD Plant 3D.

Notice how I do not have any icons enabled.  They are all greyed out.

This TOGGLE COMPASS button shown below is the controlling button for all of the other Compass buttons.  It has to be toggled ON to adjust tick mark visibility, increments, tolerances.  If this button is off, you will not see the Compass when you are routing pipe as shown below.

When that button is toggled ON, you will see the other buttons enabled, or not greyed out.

Now, let’s address the other buttons.

The top left button is the TOGGLE TICK MARKS with a TICK MARK INCREMENT setting to the right of it.  This button only sets the tick marks that show up on the compass.  The drop-down menu to the right of it showing 15° has other angles to choose ranging from 15° to 90°.

But those tick marks are basically useless unless you enable the next button – TOGGLE SNAPS.  This button also has a drop-down menu to the right of it to set the angle snap increments.

This may seem confusing but the snap increment can be different from the visible tick marks.  This may be hard to see in the image below but the tick marks are set to 45° increments but the snap is set to 15° increments and you can see as I am pulling the pipe run, a “15” is showing up at both ends of the pipe letting me know the angle I am routing.

The next button down is TOGGLE TOLERANCES.  When you select it, there is another button that is no longer greyed out in the collapsable menu called TOLERANCE SNAP INCREMENT.  You can set a 0° thru 3° tolerance for your snap increment.  

Now, this may be a lesser-used toggle but knowing what it does can help you with routing pipe requiring tolerances.  In the image below I have changed the tolerance to 2°.  I have also run a pipe 2° to the left of X (magenta pipe).  Continuing the route, I make a left turn in the Y direction.  By default, that angle should remain at 90° with a 90° Elbow in place and I would be running this pipe at 2° to the left of Y.  However, with tolerance enabled and set at 2°, I can “straighten” out the route to be in the true Y direction.  Make sure Ortho is not turned on.  You will notice at the end of my cursor or pipe run, you will see “90+2” indicating that the tolerance is being utilized.

 A close-up looking down on the pipes will show the 2° gap and the skewed red lines of connectivity, but still fully connected.

The last 2 buttons hidden in the collapsable menu are the Color and Diameter options for the Compass.  You can change to any color you wish and if the compass is too big or too small, adjust the value in the Diameter box.  In the image below, I changed the color to green and the diameter from 150 to 90 to get a smaller Compass.

I hope this helps you with pipe routing using the Compass and I plan to address some of the other commands in Plant 3D that do not get a lot of love.

Autodesk has added a new Project Compare feature in Plant 3D 2022. This is a more proficient way to update existing Plant 3D projects to have new changes that you added to your project template or from another existing project.

I will walk you through the process in which to use Project Compare to update existing projects. It is important to note that this feature is in Plant 3D 2022 and future releases only.

Let’s get started.

I have created two Plant 3D projects. One is a template project (My Template Project) and an existing project (My Existing Project).

Let’s make a change to the My Template Project.

1. Open My Template Project.
2. Right-click on the root project folder and select Project Setup from the popup menu.
3. When the Project Setup dialog opens browse to Plant 3D DWG Settings > Plant 3D Class Definitions > P3d Line Group.

Next, we’re going to add a property to the Line Number Tag Format.

4. Highlight Line Number listed in the Tag format area
5. Select the Modify… button.
6. In the Tag Format Setup dialog, change Number of Subparts from 1 to 2.
7. Make the changes shown in image below

That is the only change we need to make at this time.

8. Select Apply then OK to save and exit the Project Setup

We have an existing project needing to be updated with the changes we made to My Project Template.

9. Right-Click on the Project root folder in the Project Manager and select Project Compare… from the popup menu.
10. The first dialog ask you to select the project to compare.

9. Since we are already in the My Template Project, we will select My Existing Project. This dialog opens

Currently the dialog above shows that the My Template Project will get updated. This is wrong. We want to update the My Existing Project. Pay attention to what this notification is telling you.

11. Go ahead and switch the Current Project and Compare to: options shown in the upper left hand corner of dialog.

Change from:

To this:

Under the Compare Summery of this dialog you will see an object tree showing the difference between the two projects.

12. In the compare summery, select Piping(3D) > Classes and expand P3d Line Group. You will see the changes we made. See below.

13. Select Accept All

14. Select Sync Review. This allows you a final review to make sure these are the changes you want to make.
15. If these are the changes you want to make select Sync Now.

If everything goes as planned you should see the Project Sync Successful shown below.

Now if we open Project Setup for the My Existing Project you’ll notice that it has been updated with the config changes from the My Template Project.

At the Virtual Autodesk University this year (Oct 5-7, 2021), Ken Fauver and I will be teaching a class called “AutoCAD Plant 3D: Specs and Catalogs for the Masses – PM500005” where we will go over the best solutions for making specs available to your designers and engineers regardless of the project size and locations. One of the topics we will touch on briefly during the class is the batch file used to copy these specs to the designer’s local workspace. We will reference this post during the class for you to get an actual example of the batch file syntax.

So let’s start with the “Why” – Why do you need to copy specs to the local workspace of the designer? Accessing specs from a network location works fine in some scenarios. However, the size of the project and the number and location of the designers can drastically affect the access time when placing piping assets from the specs. A proper setup would look something like this: Spec editors edit the specs in a “SpecEdit” folder (or whatever name you choose) that is not accessible to the designers on the project. This allows the editors to work on specs, test the specs and then approve the specs for release to the project without worry of anyone using bad specs on the project. Once approved, they would then copy the specs to the live specs folder of the project(s). From there a designer could then on-demand run a batch file that would copy the project specs to their local workspace so that access time is reduced to an absolute minimum. Another option is to include the batch file in a login script or include the batch file in an AutoCAD script that will copy specs down every time Plant 3D is launched. All are viable options.

That was the “Why” – here is the “How”. Robocopy! It’s not a new tool at all. It has been around for quite a while. It is run from a Windows command prompt and it is similar to Copy and XCopy, but with many more options, and faster as well. At a Windows command prompt, if you type in robocopy /?, you will see this:

This is just a portion of the number of switches you can use to create your custom robocopy batch file. There are about 5 more pages of switches! Here is a good starter batch file you can use, and feel free to adjust as you see fit.

@echo off

IF NOT EXIST “C:\Plant Project Specs” MD “C:\Plant Project Specs”

robocopy “\\Server\Shared Folders\Spec Sheets” “C:\Plant Project Specs” *.pspc *.pspx /e /purge /ns /njs /njh /ndl /fp /log:reconcile.txt /xf *.lck /a+:R

So let’s look at what this script does:

@echo off – This basically makes it run in silent-mode, or no scrolling of what is actually happening during the robocopy.

IF NOT EXIST “C:\Plant Project Specs” MD “C:\Plant Project Specs” – This line looks to see if a specs folder exists on the designer’s local machine and if it does not exist, it makes the folder for you. It can be edited to match the folder name you choose to store your specs locally. The key here is to be consistent across all of the designers in the project.

robocopy “\\Server\Shared Folders\Spec Sheets” “C:\Plant Project Specs” *.pspc *.pspx /e /purge /ns /njs /njh /ndl /fp /log:reconcile.txt /xf *.lck /a+:R – This is where the magic happens. The first section is just the copy from and to info, and what files to copy (*.pspc and *.pspx). I will break down each switch below:

/e – copies subdirectories, including empty ones
/purge – delete destination files and folders that do not exist in the source
/ns – no size – don’t log the file sizes (part of log file)
/njs – no job summary (part of log file)
/njh – no job header (part of log file)
/ndl – no directory list – don’t log directory names (part of log file)
/fp – include full pathname of files in the output (part of log file)
/log:reconcile.txt – output status to LOG file (overwrite existing log) that is created in the same folder as the batch file.
/xf *.lck – exclude files with locked file extensions.
/a+:R – add a read-only attribute to the copied files. This makes it a little harder for the designers to get in the local spec and try to make rogue changes.

Another benefit is that this batch file only copies files that have changed in the source folder. So if you have 100 specs in the folder, but only 3 specs have changed since the last run of the batch file, it will only copy those 6 files (*.pspc and *.pspx).

Using Vault Lifecycle States with Plant 3D used to be a scary road to go down but enhancements over the last few releases have streamlined this process. I will demonstrate the process below.

Some assumptions will be made in this post that you already have a lifecycle definition already in place. If not, you can use one of the default lifecycle definitions like the Flexible Release Process. This gives you Work In Progress, For Review, Released, Quick-Change and Obsolete states to assign to the drawings / models.

Let’s start by looking at a Plant 3D project in Vault. You will notice a (1) State column that shows the current lifecycle state of the file/folder. (Yes, you can change the state of a folder). Next, notice the (2) Revision column and how all of the files in the root of the project are set to “A”. Lastly, the (3) category is color-coded. In my case the Plant 3D files are set with a turquoise color and the category is PlantProjectFile, which can be changed in the Vault Pro Client if you wish.

In the Plant 3D Models folder of my project, you will see that I have 4 drawings but the 1.DWG has a Released state set. This ensures that no one can check it out and it cannot be edited again until it is put back in a Work In Progress state. Also, the Revision is set to B. What this tells me is that this file has been created, Released (Rev A), and then the state has been changed to Work In Progress (WIP) to make more changes after the initial release and then Released again to give it a Rev B.

Keep in mind, if you just need to bump the revision number and not worry with lifecycle states, you can use the right-click option in Plant 3D to change the Revision number.

However, as you will notice, changing the Revision in Plant has no lifecycle state control. It is still set to WIP. This has to be changed in the Vault Client.

Now let’s look at the process for changing the Lifecycle state. In the Vault Pro client, find the file that needs to be set to a new lifecycle state. We will use 4.DWG for this example. The current LC State is WIP and the Rev is A. I want to change it to For Review, so it can go to a checker or someone responsible for reviewing my work. Select the file in the Vault Pro client and choose “Change State” from the ribbon (or use a right-click option)

Next, verify you are using the correct (1) LC Definition and (3) drawing file. Then change the WIP to (2) For Review and select OK.

Back in Plant 3D, if you “Refresh from Vault” either from the Vault ribbon or from the right-click option in the Project Manager, you should then see the updated LC state in the “Work History” of 4.DWG.

Can you still check it out and make modifications while it is under review? Yes, you can. Be careful with that. If a file is under review, it should not be edited as if it is still WIP. However, it could stay in “For Review” to make changes the reviewer has requested.

Now, the file is ready to release. Again, change the state as we did before to Released, refresh the project in Plant 3D and notice the (1) icon in the Project Manager and the (2) status in the Work History.

Repeat the process of moving the 4.DWG file back to WIP from a Released State and you will see the (1) Revision get bumped to the next value. Now Release it again in the Vault Pro Client and the ability to (2) check it out and edit is declined.

In closing, I will mention that other such tasks performed within the Vault Pro Client as it relates to the Plant 3D project need to be handled with great care. Perhaps a single, responsible party could be assigned to make the LC state changes for the project to lessen the chances that a “nuking of the project” does not take place. I do not flippantly use that term. Modifications made to a Plant 3D project inside of the Vault Pro client can have devastating effects and could render the project unusable. Consult your Plant support team at ECAD before making changes or at the very least, test the change you would like to make on a sandbox Vault and Plant 3D test project.