Integration standardizes and improves the communication among the various authoring tools you use in the course of designing, constructing, and operating a plant. SmartPlant integration manages data exchange among these authoring tools, which enables sharing and re-use of plant information throughout the plant life-cycle. SmartPlant Foundation acts as a repository for data and a medium through which information is shared among other tools, such as Aspen Basic Engineering, Smart Instrumentation, Smart Electrical, and Smart 3D.
Most of the commands that provide access to SmartPlant integration functionality exist in the common user interface available on the SmartPlant menu in SmartPlant P&ID Drawing Manager and the .
The following graphic displays what SmartPlant P&ID publishes and retrieves and shows the flow of data and the different types of data.
SmartPlant P&ID interacts with SmartPlant Foundation by correlating items between the plant database and the SmartPlant Foundation database, retrieving documents from SmartPlant Foundation. Also, SmartPlant P&ID creates a set of tasks in the To Do List that you can run to update the plant database. In the SmartPlant P&ID Modeler, you can also use the commands on the SmartPlant menu to publish documents and retrieve data, access SmartPlant Foundation to browse data, and subscribe to change notifications and compare documents.
You can only use the SmartPlant menu commands after your plant is registered. For more information, see SmartPlant P&ID Online Help.
Registering Tools
Before you can publish and retrieve documents from any of the other authoring tools, such as Smart Electrical or Smart Instrumentation, you must register each plant in the SmartPlant P&ID Modeler with a SmartPlant Foundation database. The connection allows SmartPlant P&ID to use the commands on the SmartPlant menu. A SmartPlant P&ID administrator typically registers a plant.
The software maps a plant and all its projects to a single SmartPlant Foundation URL, which points to one, and only one, SmartPlant Foundation plant database and its projects. When you use the Register command in any of the authoring tools, you are registering an authoring tool plant with a SmartPlant Foundation URL and plant that you specify.
The system administrator must register each plant in the authoring tool once; this action takes place in Smart Engineering Manager. After the plant is registered, you can publish and retrieve documents.