Laz Plant Browser (Batch Command)

Ever tired on running the same command for each drawing for a whole bunch of drawings? Ever tried to import excel into the data manager and only to found out that it opens all the drawings at once causing the software to run out of memory?

LazPlantBrowser, is a free project. This app allows you to process multiple P&ID drawings at once (support for Piping, Ortho and Iso project will be added in the future). You can choose available commands from the list or make your own command. It works for AutoCAD Plant 3D 2012 and P&ID 2012 currently. The default package already comes with a Update Acquisition addin dll.

Over the next few weeks i'll be blogging on how to develop this app and how to develop plugins for this app. I'll be making this app open source soon so don't bother asking for codes.

Download LazPlantBrowser-0.1Beta.zip (Please download Updated version here)

Future roadmap

Add support for Piping, Ortho and Iso project
Implement Silent command (open the database instead of the document) to reduce running time
Save commands as a group to be reused
UI plugin to provide option for command

Here's an introduction

Netload the only dll in the package and launch the palette using LazPlantBrowser command. Select drawings and click next

Select drawings

Add commands, reorder selected commands and click run.

Select commands

To add additional commands, drop a dll which implements IBatchCommand into the Addins folder.

Adding folder

Category: AutoCAD P&ID, AutoCAD Plant 3D, LazPLantBrowser

12 Comments

E.K said on Oct 17 2012 at 7:05 PM

I tried to netload the .dll, but Acad PID 2012 SP1 keeps saying that this file is not compatible with my version... any ideas?
ravetam said on Oct 24 2012 at 11:05 PM

Can you post a screenshot? Or more detail on the error?
Craig said on Oct 26 2012 at 8:06 AM

I just tried to run this on P&ID 2013 and received an error in the command line. Would it be much trouble to add support for 2013? This is just the utility I've been looking for, for the past few months!

Thanks,
Craig
ravetam said on Oct 27 2012 at 12:12 AM

Hi Craig, I have build the latest beta but I haven't got the time to post it (it will support 2013 and all the other project types). Come back in a few days!
Craig said on Oct 30 2012 at 2:11 AM

Thank you so much! I will install it and test it out today/tomorrow and let you know how it goes.

Thanks again,
Craig
ravetam said on Oct 30 2012 at 12:42 PM

Remember to get the latest beta from the download page :)
Craig said on Nov 8 2012 at 1:24 AM

I've been trying to install and run this dll in P3D 2013 and continue to get the following error when I try and netload the dll:

Command: Cannot load assembly. Error details: System.IO.FileLoadException: Could not load file or assembly 'file:///C:\Program Files\Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins\Lazcad.PlantBrowser.bundle\Contents\Lazcad.PlantBrowser.2013.dll' or one of its dependencies. Operation is not supported. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131515)
File name: 'file:///C:\Program Files\Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins\Lazcad.PlantBrowser.bundle\Contents\Lazcad.PlantBrowser.2013.dll' ---> System.NotSupportedException: An attempt was made to load an assembly from a network location which would have caused the assembly to be sandboxed in previous versions of the .NET Framework. This release of the .NET Framework does not enable CAS policy by default, so this load may be dangerous. If this load is not intended to sandbox the assembly, please enable the loadFromRemoteSources switch. See http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=155569 for more information.
at System.Reflection.RuntimeAssembly._nLoad(AssemblyName fileName, String codeBase, Evidence assemblySecurity, RuntimeAssembly locationHint, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, Boolean throwOnFileNotFound, Boolean forIntrospection, Boolean suppressSecurityChecks)

I also tried to register the dll with windows and received and error message. Could that be the problem?

Any ideas?

Thanks again for your time and help,
Craig
Craig said on Nov 8 2012 at 10:07 AM

Just in case anyone experiences a similar error, the thing that fixed it was to right-click on the zip folder, go to properties, and "unblock" the file. Then I extracted it to the %AppData%\Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins location, restarted P&ID/P3D, and typed in "lazplantbrowser".

Thanks again!
Craig said on Nov 8 2012 at 12:20 PM

Correction on that last post, I ended up extracting the zip file to the following path: C:\Program Files\Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins

And then restarted P&ID/P3D, and type in "lazplantbrowser".
ravetam said on Nov 8 2012 at 12:44 PM

Thanks for the information Craig!
Craig said on Nov 20 2012 at 1:18 AM

I just wanted to follow up and say thanks again for creating this utility. It has been a great help in updating our 450+ P&IDs automatically. Thanks again for making it available and for all of your help!

Great Tool!

Thanks,
Craig
ravetam said on Nov 30 2012 at 11:15 PM

450, that's a lot. The most drawings in a project that i have is 100+. Run the tool every time i need to get a report, there's so much problem where the acquisition property did not update properly.