AutoCAD Plant and P&ID are 2 great enhancements to  AutoCAD with specialised toolsets.  AutoCAD P&ID creates all your 2D schematic components with ease and AutoCAD Plant creates your 3D pipe runs as well as your structures and equipment with minimal fuss.

If you have already created your 2D blocks in AutoCAD or created your 3D equipment,  AutoCAD Plant has quick and simple wizards to transfer that already created components into it’s envirnoment.

For your 2D schematics of your equipment

it is as simple as right clicking and selecting convert to P&ID.

This once off component creation process is literally less than 5 clicks.

For the 3D equipment you can either create your 3D equipment using AutoCAD Plant 3D or import a simplified Inventor assembly/part or iges/step file.

On the equipment panel you will find the following commands.

Convert Equipment

This will take an existing object created by AutoCAD 3D modelling and convert it to a 3D plant equipment model with tags and nozzles attached.

Convert Inventor Equipment

After creating your assembly or part in Inventor you simplify and export as an .adsk file.  This file is then ready for the import process into Plant 3D.

The easiest method to create equipment if it has not been modelled up already is through the create equipment process in AutoCAD Plant.  In the below picture you can see the many different types of 3D equipment that can be created.

For creating the steel structures I would suggest using the native Plant 3D methods.  It’s an extremely quick process to create and much faster than drawing up in Inventor as an alternative.