🛠️ 6 Powerful AutoCAD Tools for Piping Sections & Plans

Creating plan and section drawings in piping projects is not hard…
but creating them accurately, repeatedly, and fast is where most time is wasted.

What if your chainages, cross-sections, elevations, and reports could be generated automatically—directly from your drawing or Excel?

In this video, I’ll show you 6 powerful AutoCAD programs that can cut hours of manual work into minutes.

🎥 Watch How to Automate Pipe Plan, LS & Cross Sections

In the piping industry, generating plan views, longitudinal sections, and cross sections is a daily requirement. But manual marking of chainages, elevations, and section lines is slow, error-prone, and difficult to revise.

To solve this, we’ve developed a Pipe Section automation toolkit.
👉 First, load Pipe_Section.VLX using the APPLOAD command.

Let’s now walk through all 6 time-saving commands, one by one.

🟢 1. Automatic Chainage & Cross-Section Marking Along Alignment

Here, we have a 3D alignment.

👉 Our requirement:

  • Chainage text every 20 meters

  • Cross-section lines every 10 meters

▶ Command: Draw_Chainge

Workflow:

  • Select the alignment

  • Enter Elevation precision (example: 3)

  • Enter Scale factor (example: 2)

  • Provide Starting chainage (0)

  • Provide Chainage interval (10)

  • Provide Marking distance (10)

  • Enter Cross-section line length (20)

  • Choose chainage text position — Left / Center / Right

💥 Result:

  • Chainage lines created automatically

  • Clean, readable text

  • No overlaps

📁 Finally, the program exports a CSV file containing:

  • Serial number

  • Chainage

  • Distance between points

  • Easting

  • Northing

  • Elevation

  • IP name

🟢 2. Chainage Marking + Coordinate Export from Drawing

Now let’s combine drawing + data.

We already have:

  • A 3D alignment

  • A CSV file with chainage and remarks

▶ Command: Draw_LS

Steps:

  • Select the alignment

  • Enter cross-section line length

  • Select the CSV file

💥 Result:

  • Cross-section lines drawn automatically

  • Chainage and remarks placed neatly on both sides

  • A new CSV file exported

📊 The Excel output includes:

  • Serial number

  • Chainage

  • Distance

  • Easting

  • Northing

  • Elevation

No manual coordinate extraction. Zero errors.

🟢 3. Colored Line–Based Longitudinal Section (CLS)

In many projects, multiple colored lines represent different pipelines or utilities. Manually measuring each line and labeling them—

  • 👉 Time-consuming

  • 👉 Text overlap issues

▶ Command: Draw_CLS

Inputs:

  • Text height (example: 2.5)

  • Chainage precision

  • Starting section number

  • Pick a Y-reference point

  • Select all colored lines

💥 Result:

  • A clean reference longitudinal section

  • Line lengths placed neatly below

  • Smart leader lines added automatically when lines are close

  • Zero text overlap

Readable. Professional. Client-ready.

🟢 4. Double-Band Longitudinal Section (Length + Chainage)

This command creates two section bands:

  • One for line length

  • One for corresponding chainage

▶ Command: (Same workflow as CLS)

💥 Result:

  • Structured, layered LS drawing

  • Perfect for detailed engineering submissions

  • Ideal for review and approvals

🟢 5. Mark Distances from Alignment to Base Line

Sometimes you need to mark chainages at every change point and connect them to a base line.

▶ Command: Mark_Chainge

Steps:

  • Select the alignment

  • Set chainage precision

  • Select multiple alignments (if needed)

  • Enter text height

  • Select the base line

💥 Result:

  • Projection lines drawn automatically

  • Smart spacing logic prevents text overlap

  • Clean and readable LS output

🟢 6. Generate Plan & Longitudinal Section Directly from Excel

This is the ultimate automation.

We start with an Excel file containing:

  • Serial number

  • Easting

  • Northing

  • Elevation

  • Chainage

  • Remarks

Save it as a CSV file.

▶ Command: LS_Plan

Inputs:

  • Text height (example: 2.5)

  • Datum value (example: 60)

  • Select the CSV file

💥 Result:

  • Plan generated from Easting & Northing

  • Longitudinal section generated from Elevation & Chainage

  • Remarks placed automatically

  • Fully synchronized drawing

No manual drafting. No recalculation.

If these tools can save hours of drafting time in your piping projects, we’d be happy to help you use them.

📩 Contact: cadsuperuser@gmail.com

  • ✔️ Affordable licensing

  • ✔️ Custom modifications for your project workflow

👉 Watch once. Automate forever.