When you work in an integrated environment with SmartPlant Enterprise, you must publish documents containing the drawing data and relationships before other authoring tools can share this information. You can publish your documents from the Drawings and Reports task Management Console or from a 3D modeling task by using the Tools > Drawings Console command.
Before you can publish documents in the software, you must install the SmartPlant Client and the SmartPlant Schema Component, then register the model using the SmartPlant Registration Wizard.
In a 3D task, you can use SmartPlant > Retrieve to create and update the Design Basis objects.
The software allows you to publish modified and new objects with the Changes Only option. Publish tasks processed through the Changes Only workflow are smaller compared to All publishes, and are queued to Load and Consolidate before the merge operation. The merge operation combines the delta data with the previous complete publish data. After the merge operation succeeds, the information is retrievable. The Changes Only publishes are not retrievable. To retrieve a Changes Only publish, you must perform an All publish, which only happens after the load and consolidate processes.
The Publish and Update and Publish commands are available for the following document types:
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3D Model Data (SmartPlant Review file type)
The 3D Model Data component is capable of publishing many object types (for example: Piping, Equipment, Cable Trays) depending on the definition of
the filter during component setup.
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Orthographic Drawings (viewable file with links to data)
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Isogen Isometric Drawings (viewable file with links to data)
The software supports publishing additional files (for example: PCF, POD) along with
the SHA drawing. For more information, see Enterprise Data in the Isometric Drawing Options Reference Guide. You can access this document using the Help > Printable Guides command in the software.
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Reports (viewable file with links to data)
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The viewable files created when you publish drawings and reports provide relationship links to the 3D Model Data. You must also publish the 3D Model Data to provide the navigation between the viewable files and the 3D Model Data.
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The Publish > Update and Publish command updates and then immediately publishes the selected documents in one step. This command is available only if the model is registered with SmartPlant Foundation.
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For a list of common tasks related to publishing, see Publish Common Tasks.
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If you are publishing 3D Model Data documents, set the surface style rules and aspects before publishing the documents.
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Every time you generate drawings and reports from Smart 3D in an integrated environment, a SmartPlant Foundation token is used.
When you publish documents, the software:
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Publishes a visual representation of the document that you can view without Smart 3D. For drawings, this is an Intergraph proprietary file, called a RAD file (.sha). For reports, the viewable file is a Microsoft Excel workbook. You can review and mark up the visual representation of the document using SmartPlant Markup Plus or SmartSketch.
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Places the published XML file and any viewable files in the appropriate SmartPlant Foundation vault. This XML file can be retrieved when you are in other authoring tools.
Reasons to Publish
You publish documents and associated data for several reasons:
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Exchanging of data with other tools
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Sharing common data between tools
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Providing enterprise-wide accessibility to published documents
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Managing change, including workflow history, document revisions, and title block information
Revisions and Versions of Published Documents
The first time that you publish a document, the software creates a new document master and the first revision. A revision (major) is an officially recognized change to a document. A version (minor) is an intermediate update that you have published. Revisions can be published for sharing or they can go through an approval process, depending on your needs. Each revisions of a document can have multiple versions.
You can also include revision information within the title block of a drawing by placing drawing property labels within the drawing template.
When you publish data from any authoring tool, you may not be able to view all of
the properties that you published in the SmartPlant Client. You can customize view
definitions to allow you to see additional properties. For more information on defining
view definitions in the SmartPlant schema, see the SmartPlant Schema Editor User's Guide. For further assistance with viewing data, contact support. You can find support
information on our web site, .