Use Case

Piping Designers place components hourly and at some point, newly placed components must be extracted to support subsequent roles that support purchasing, fabricating, and traceability to satisfy compliance requirements.

These bulk extractions, or Material Take-offs (MTOs), is a common use case.


Creating material snapshots periodically provides historical MTO Excel files containing rows of piping, steel, or even electrical components required to construct designs against 3D CADWorx or AutoCAD PLANT 3D models.  When these records are recalled and compared to the current 3D model collection of parts, the results of MTOWorx compare processors are simply Add / Delete sheets.


In many situations, MTOWorx Snapshots are used to create material requisitions or purchases.  Material planner roles then append CAD data by adjusting quantities or populating part numbers.  Often work orders demand that CAD data be appended with additional properties like work order numbers, vendor, due date, etc.


This article describes how MTOWorx creates highly flexible SOCKETWorx templates to produce Excel files that can have additional columns with part catalog data to support the design and integrity management compliance programs. 


SOCKETWorx templates can be configured to support many requirements from simple worksheets for review or Loadsheets configured for electronic exchange with SAP, SmartGEP, JDE, or any other ERP/MRP business system.


Setup & Configuraiton

CWX and P3D

There is absolutely no configuration or setup required within CADWorx PLANT or AutoCAD PLANT 3D.

MTOWorx knows which application is active and automatically adjusts the palette interface to the active program.


Worx Settings

Set Snapshot Options

There are 3 groups of settings to consider; 1) Piping, 2) Steel, & 3) Bolt Control and Length settings.


CWX and P3D Snapshots will include default fields for Piping and Steel.

Additional fields may be added for each group.  Add columns to roll up or accumulated against them where there are needs to group by properties like Line Number, Drawing Number, and the other options. 

Note, The MTOWorx Compare Processor must find columns in Snapshots equal to the current Worx Settings!  If there is a mismatch, MTOWorx will display an associated warning.


Using Part Number becomes mandatory when connecting with SOCKETWorx Part Catalogs.  

Snapshot Program Codes Filters

CWX & P3D parts can be suppressed by Program Code Filters.
By default, all 200+ program codes are set to be accumulated.  Under each group, unchecking specific component types unchecking will suppress component types from all snapshot accumulations.



SOCKETWorx Templates 

Configure and set up Excel workbooks with up to six  SOCKETWorx Templates.  Why six?  Because everyone wants a six-pack of some sort.


Template configuration includes setting data start-row, choosing an Excel template file to load, enabling information fields, and assigning them to workbook columns.


If connecting to SOCKETWorx Part Catalogs, Lookup Lists, or Work Orders, then enter the SOCKETWorx site and user credentials.  Once connected the SOCKETWorx fields can be added and enabled. 

Note, Part Number is mandatory when connecting to SOCKETWorx Parts Catalogs.


Add and remove fields to format Excel output by assigning them to workbook columns and enabling them.


Creating Snapshots


There are so many reasons to take material take-off snapshots.  
These Excel workbooks contain all the parts from the active CWX or P3D model, inclusive of XREF files.
They can be used as-is and saved to be recalled by the MTOWorx 'All Parts' and 'Cut Pipe' Compare processors.


There are two MTOWorx compare options; (1) All Parts and (2) Pipe Only.  Each satisfy numerous use cases when combined with all the Worx Settings accumulation controls.

The pipe-only option includes the unique CAD Identifier, or GUID, so that cut lengths are processed against them.


Compare All

Once Snapshots exist as Excel workbooks, they can be loaded by clicking the Snapshot File button within the Home Tab Compare To section and selecting one of them to load.


If exporting the current model snapshot represents the desired results, then click the Bypass Blank button in the Home tab Compare To section.  The results are populated and ready for review and export processing.


After using either Compare To option, the results are displayed and they contain 5 quantity assessments.

  • No Change, no color change, and quantity equals zero
  • Increased, Text color set to green
  • Decreased, text color set to red
  • Added, background color set to green
  • Deleted, background color set to red

4. Producing SOCKECTWorx Template Reports

Click SOCKECTWorx Report to send results to one of six templates.

Produces a report against the active SOCKETWorx Template.