The Plant 3D Compass

I don't think enough love has been given to the Plant 3D Compass settings.  I would like to explain them to you in this post so you can get the most usage out of them that you can.

So these are the Compass settings found in the Home tab of the ribbon in AutoCAD Plant 3D.

Notice how I do not have any icons enabled.  They are all greyed out.

This TOGGLE COMPASS button shown below is the controlling button for all of the other Compass buttons.  It has to be toggled ON to adjust tick mark visibility, increments, tolerances.  If this button is off, you will not see the Compass when you are routing pipe as shown below.

When that button is toggled ON, you will see the other buttons enabled, or not greyed out.

Now, let's address the other buttons.

The top left button is the TOGGLE TICK MARKS with a TICK MARK INCREMENT setting to the right of it.  This button only sets the tick marks that show up on the compass.  The drop-down menu to the right of it showing 15° has other angles to choose ranging from 15° to 90°.

But those tick marks are basically useless unless you enable the next button - TOGGLE SNAPS.  This button also has a drop-down menu to the right of it to set the angle snap increments.

This may seem confusing but the snap increment can be different from the visible tick marks.  This may be hard to see in the image below but the tick marks are set to 45° increments but the snap is set to 15° increments and you can see as I am pulling the pipe run, a "15" is showing up at both ends of the pipe letting me know the angle I am routing.

The next button down is TOGGLE TOLERANCES.  When you select it, there is another button that is no longer greyed out in the collapsed ribbon called TOLERANCE SNAP INCREMENT.  You can set a 0° thru 3° tolerance for your snap increment.  

Now, this may be a lesser-used toggle but knowing what it does can help you with routing pipe requiring tolerances.  In the image below I have changed the tolerance to 2°.  I have also run a pipe 2° to the left of X (magenta pipe).  Continuing the route, I make a left turn in the Y direction.  By default, that angle should remain at 90° with a 90° Elbow in place and I would be running this pipe at 2° to the left of Y.  However, with tolerance enabled and set at 2°, I can "straighten" out the route to be in the true Y direction.  Make sure Ortho is not turned on.  You will notice at the end of my cursor or pipe run, you will see "90+2" indicating that the tolerance is being utilized.

 A close-up looking down on the pipes will show the 2° gap and the skewed red lines of connectivity, but still fully connected.

The last 2 buttons hidden in the collapsed ribbon are the Color and Diameter options for the Compass.  You can change to any color you wish and if the compass is too big or too small, adjust the value in the Diameter box.  In the image below, I changed the color to green and the diameter from 150 to 90 to get a smaller Compass.

I hope this helps you with pipe routing using the Compass and I plan to address some of the other commands in Plant 3D that do not get a lot of love.  If you have a suggestion for a command or group of buttons you have always seen but never knew how they worked, let me know and I will try to get it on here for you.