P+ID Projects (P+ID)

A Project is a collection of data associated with a specific task; this data includes P+ID drawings, various Bills of Materials (BOMs) and symbol libraries.

Each project is assigned a name containing a maximum of 31 characters. We refer to the project currently open as the "active project".

For each project, HiCAD creates a RPA file under the name of the project in the HiCAD directory ...\PID\PROJECTSj, i.e. if the name DEMO is given to a project, then a file with the path ...\PID\PROJECTS\DEMO.RPA is created.

Initially, processing is carried out on a copy of the project in the ...\PID\WORK\Number of drawing thumbnail] sub-directory. This means that all project data is contained in the sub directory, ...\PID\WORK\[Number of drawing thumbnail]\DEMO. The processed project is only passed from the project copy in the WORK directory to the original project stored in the PROJECTS directory when you respond with Yes to the Save Project? query.

The number of the drawing thumbnail refers to the number of loaded drawings in HiCAD, i.e. it can be a number between 1 and 18. In the Switch drawing tab of the ICN you can view miniature views and file names of all loaded drawings and switch between them.

Projects are given the file name extension .RPA. A project can have a maximum of 999 sheets. HiCAD automatically assigns names to these sheets and saves them together with the project. Sheet names are composed of the identification characters indicating the type of plan followed by a unique number automatically assigned by the program.

HiCAD differenciates between the following types:

Example of a P+ID sheet name: S0000012

An RPA file is a type of archive and contains several files. This data is temporarily unpacked in the PID\WORK\NAME sub-directory, whereby NAME indicates the name of the active project. These are, for example, files with file name extension:

.ANS, .SZN, .POM, .ETZ, .SZN.FEA.ARCHIV, .SZN.ELREF, .SZN.FEA, .EPR, .SLI, .SLZ and .TXT

All project data processing is carried out on these files. The appropriate RPA files are updated when the project is saved. When you close a project, the complete name sub-directory is automatically deleted. Please do not delete the files manually!

General Information (P+ID)