V8i to OpenPlant PID CONNECT Edition Upgrade with Page Connectors

This Procedure explains the specific required workflow to upgrade from OpenPlant PID V8i to CONNECT Edition.

OpenPlant PID V8i Page Connector Links

OpenPlant PID v8i requires a database for page connectors. Each page connector in a drawing has a unique GUID and instance in the database. If two page connectors are linked, a relationship between them exists in the database. There is also a LINKED_CONNECTOR_ID property, whose value should be the GUID of the linked page connector. This property value is populated in two ways

When an existing page connector is placed
When the right-click Follow command is used to navigate to a page connector

Placing a new page connector does not have a value, as it is not linked. If later linked, but never Followed back to the "new" page connector, it would not have a property value. The Follow command worked, because OPPID V8i relied on the database relationship between the two page connectors.

OpenPlant PID CONNECT Edition Page Connector Links

OpenPlant PID CE uses iModelHub. A single page connector instance, one GUID, is used for linked page connectors. This implementation reduces the number of relationships required. limits the auto-sync of data to just page connectors in a few scenarios (open/close drawing, place existing, delete).

OpenPlant PID CONNECT Edition Upgrade v8i Page Connector Links

OpenPlant PID CE cannot access the v8i database. Upgrading from V8i drawings to CONNECT Edition drawings relies on the LINKED_CONNECTOR_ID property value being correctly populated for a linked page connector. When upgrade finds a page connector, it checks for a linked connector guid. If there is a value, it looks for that guid in the iModelHub. If found, the page connector is linked to the page connector in the iModelHub and its GUID is changed to match the linked one. If there was no linked guid or it was not found in the iModelHub, the page connector is considered new. Its instance and GUID are written to the iModelHub.

During upgrade if it encounters a page connector, which was linked, but didn't have the linked GUID, first. That was the "new" page connector in v8i and would be the "new" in CE. In another drawing, it would encounter the linked page connector and link them in CONNECT Edition.The pipe runs, which had same GUID in V8i, will also have the same in CE. A pipe run could span 2 drawings, but the page connectors would be different with different numbers. In OpenPlant PID CONNECT Edition the page connector linked label is the tag, which must be unique.

To ensure the linked connector id property is populated for all linked page connectors, a special preprocessing/upgrade command is created. OpenPlant PID detects if a drawing requires an upgrade, when the drawing is being opened. It is during the open process that the upgrade occurs. If user opened a v8i drawing, it would be upgraded before user could run the command. That v8i drawing could have issues. Therefore, the special command must be run in a new temporary CE drawing. The command reads all drawings in the CE drawing’s directory. It builds tables of page connector ids both with and without linked connector ids. Using those tables, it determines which page connectors should have had linked connector id. Finally, it externally opens each problem drawing as a read-write and populates the missing values. A report is generated. Check Upgrade procedure.