In an integrated environment, the authoring tools share data and relationships when you publish documents containing the data and relationships. The publishing process involves selecting a document to publish, assigning it to a workflow when necessary, and specifying a version and revision of the document if specified in SmartPlant Foundation. For most documents, the software also publishes the data that is associated with the document when you publish.
The authoring tools (Smart P&ID or Smart Instrumentation, for instance) publish data in .xml format. All leading and trailing spaces are trimmed from all strings and from all values without units. These spaces will not appear in the published data file. The software then loads the data from the .xml files to the SmartPlant Foundation database. After the data is loaded into SmartPlant Foundation, you can retrieve the data from into other authoring tools.
When you publish documents, the software does the following things:
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Creates a new master document and the first revision in SmartPlant Foundation the first time that you publish a document. From that point on, the software creates new versions and revisions each time that you publish the document. The software relates revisions to the master document. You can publish subsequent revisions into a workflow, which can be a different workflow from the original publish action. Changes in the document status of a related revision change the status of the subsequently published versions and revisions of the document.
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Publishes a visual representation of the document that you can view without the authoring tool. For many applications, this is an Intergraph proprietary file, called a RAD file. The viewable file can also be an Excel workbook or another viewable file type, such as .pdf or .doc. Users can review and edit the visual representation of the document using SmartPlant Markup.
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Publishes associated data, depending on workflow approval. If the data is approved and loaded, it is used for reporting and subsequent retrieval by downstream applications. The software publishes only meaningful engineering data. The published data is not enough to recreate the document in the original authoring tool.
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The software publishes some document types without the associated data, such as reports from authoring tools (for example, line lists in P&ID). You can submit documents published without data to workflows just like documents with data. The document types and data that you can publish depend on the authoring tool that you use.
For more information about revisions and versions, see the SmartPlant Foundation Web Client Help.
Reasons to Publish
You can publish documents and associated data for several reasons:
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To exchange and enhance data among tools, to avoid creating data multiple times in multiple authoring tools
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To report on common data that originates in multiple tools
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To provide enterprise-wide accessibility to published documents
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To manage change, including workflow history and document revision management
You can also publish documents to share information with users in other tools without going through a formal workflow. To share data, you can publish a document to a For sharing workflow that has only a load step so that the data is loaded into SmartPlant Foundation as soon as you publish the document.
You can also publish a document by not assigning the document to a workflow, but rather by using the default workflow from SmartPlant Foundation. When you do not select a workflow for a document during publishing, the SmartPlant Loader loads the document into SmartPlant Foundation as soon as it reaches the top of the Loader queue.
Document Types for Publishing
Each authoring tool publishes different documents and data. The published PBS document contains information about the physical plant with a structure consisting of plants, areas, and units. The default structure is plant/area/unit, but you can define a custom hierarchy in the Schema Editor. When a PBS document is published from SmartPlant Foundation, the authoring tools are notified about the plant, areas, and units that need to be created in each authoring tool.
The project breakdown structure, project definition document, and project list contain information about projects and their statuses.
The project breakdown structure contains a single project and the hierarchy of contracts under that project in a plant/project structure. The project definition document contains information for a single project that needs to be created in the authoring tool. The project list contains a list of all projects in a plant, and it is used by those authoring tools that create all projects at one time.
The plant breakdown structure and project breakdown structure used in the authoring
tools must match the structure in SmartPlant Foundation for publishing from the authoring
tools and object correlation to work correctly.
In Smart Instrumentation, the following documents can be published out of the box. Your administrator can configure other documents for publish.
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EDEs (except for View Only EDEs)
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Enhanced SmartLoop Reports
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Instrument Specification Sheets
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Instrument Process Data Sheets
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Dimensional Data Sheets (DDP)
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Select Wiring Reports
Documents cannot be published if:
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The Find query/EDE item is Access Denied.
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The item for publishing is not associated to a Plant, Area, or Unit.
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When the query/EDE item type is not appropriate for the selected Publish Document Type. For example, when trying to publish a query containing item type: Controller to a Publish Document Type of Instrument Index.
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When publishing user-defined EDEs of document types: Instrument Specification, Instrument Process Data, DDP, or Loop Drawing, it is recommended that you add the suffix (EDE) to the name of the user defined EDE. When publishing these document types as EDEs the layout of the document is different from that of the out-of-the-box document. Adding the suffix helps when selecting in the Publish dialog box, to identify which documents display the standard layout or the EDE layout in Smart Instrumentation. There is no difference in the data displayed, just the visual appearance.
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EDE's in an integrated environment cannot be published at the Domain level. When creating the EDE in the Query Builder you must include the appropriate Level item type.
Publishing Files without Data
Certain reports, for example Wiring, are published without data. This is because they are supplied out-of-the-box without any mapping to the SmartPlant Schema. You can apply you own mapping for the report to publish with data.
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When you publish data from an authoring tool, you may not be able view all the properties that you published in the SmartPlant Foundation client. You can customize view definitions to allow you to see additional properties. For more information about defining view definitions in the SmartPlant schema, see Create a View Definition in the Schema Editor User's Guide. For further assistance with visualizing data in SmartPlant Foundation, contact Customer Support.
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When publishing or retrieving documents to a machine that doesn't have administration rights, you must apply to the XML folder located in the Smart Instrumentation folder full read, write, and modify permissions. If the XML folder does not have these permissions you will not be able to publish or retrieve documents.