Primary / Secondary Shapes

Diagrams User Guide

Diagrams : Working with Diagrams : Primary / Secondary Shapes

Primary / Secondary Shapes

Diagrams supports a Primary/Secondary shapes concept. This allows a single item in the database to be represented by several shapes in diagrams. The shapes can exist in the same page, on another page in the same diagram or on different diagrams. A good example of this are equipment items to which several systems are connected, such as the main engine. Even if the main engine will be represented on all the related systems' diagrams, it can still be a single item in the database.

In some cases the main responsibility for an equipment item lies with a certain design team or system design group while it needs to be accessible to other teams for connecting other systems to it. To support this way of working, shapes can be considered Primary or Secondary, and different rules and restrictions can be applied to these categories.

We can distinguish two groups of secondary elements:

1.

The non-inline elements:

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Equipment items

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Sub-equipment items

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Offline instruments

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Electrical connections

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The system allows 0-n primary shapes and 0-n secondary shapes for a certain non-inline element in the database. This means that the shapes corresponding to a certain DB element might be all primary, all secondary or a mix of primary and secondary.

For example, if an equipment shape is deleted while keeping the corresponding DB item, and later a new shape is created referring to the same DB item, the new shape will be secondary even if no primary shape exists. This kind of situation is not handled automatically by the system. It is however possible for the user to manually change the IsPrimary flag in the shape data window.

2.

The inline elements (elements that can be created under the branch's segment)

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Inline instruments

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Off page connectors (incoming/outgoing)

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Pipe destinations

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In contrast to the elements from the first group, the system allows only one primary shape and 0-n secondary shapes for an element in the database. It is not allowed to change the primary status for these shapes. This means that the primary shape will always be primary and the secondary shape will always be secondary.

Deleting the secondary shape will never remove the element from the database, but deleting the primary one will always remove it.

Secondary shapes can be created in two main ways:

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By changing the name into an already existing name.

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By copying and pasting shapes in the drawing.

Note:

The usage of Primary/Secondary shapes for certain combinations of main items having subitems and/or connected cables or pipes involves a complex behaviour and can give results that were not expected by the user. When using the Primary/Secondary shapes for such combinations, it is important that the user understands all implications of his/her actions.

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