EPIC engineer, Wayne Jasper recently attended a webinar by Hagerman & Company on 
AutoCAD Plant 3D: Piping and P&ID. Jasper was investigating an intelligent plant piping and instrumentation modeling program that could make P&ID standardization and customization more efficient.
The program allows users to easily select and insert ISA symbols into customizable pallet templates. Once a pallet is saved in the program, its base settings can be automatically generated on the next P&ID the engineer develops. EPIC could save custom pallets for different industries and companies for faster customized P&ID creation.
The intelligent design software has many other features that lend to improved P&ID development. The program can be setup to automatically select valves and other instrumentation that would work with the pipeline once the engineer begins assigning data to the pipeline (size, flow rate, etc.)
The intelligent software also allows for easier communications as the project moves forward from the P&ID stage. Any information entered by the P&ID developer can be easily accessed and interpreted by future project contributors, including programmers, craftsmen and the project manager. It allows for other project team members to extract data and input data in spreadsheet format to aid in programming and procurement.
Several of EPIC’s engineers have been evaluating this technology for use at EPIC. EPIC is implementing the software within the next six months.