I know there's quite a bit of members here who are drafters proficient in AutoCad / CADWorx. I've only worked with Smartplant 3D since I started in the field 6 years ago.

Considering that all the local job postings I've seen for a Piping Designer are asking for a CADWorx Certificate / Experience, I decided to take the a week long crash course at CODECad.

Now that I've finished the course, I'm trying to become a proficient user of the program, hoping it will increase my chances of landing a job again in the field, I figured it might be a good idea to buy a subscription plan for home use and practice practice practice.

The company I'm getting it from will be preloading it with a spec list that contains commonly used pipe/fitting/valve components used in O&G .

I have some questions that I'm hoping people who are proficient at these programs for work can answer.

SPECS:
(1) As piping designers, are we expected to tweak these when needed pending proper approval protocol? Or do we go through a material/database admin. For SP3D as it requires a team of admins to maintain the database, we usually put in a request to add components when process/construction changes require it.

GENERAL PIPING DESIGN:
(2) During my workshop, we did a lot of referencing in steelwork/equipment models. Is this common work practice? In SP3D we were just given an area and we mostly did the temp steel and equipments (as per mech GAs) on where we would like them to be located and then the CSA/Mech/Electrical group would come in and do their thing where they would model their own to replace my temp components.

I guess what I'm asking is, do we work at a live plant where designers from other disciplines can come in and add/modify/delete stuff as needed at the same time?

(3) The biggest change for me was working in wireframe vs pure 3D Solids. One thing I noticed is there would be cases where I thought a line was nice and straight and when i do SHIFT+MMB to review, it's slightly crooked even when using point filters manually. Is there a way I can program to tell the program that if I press MMB, to lock it at a locked 90° angle on the XYZ axis based on coordinate 0,0,0?

ISOGEN & VIEWPORTS:
(4) I'm hoping companies already have border templates with the viewport locations predefined for pipe isometrics/equipment GAs? Also what would you say are the most common errors people run to when generating isometrics that I should learn how to troubleshoot.

DISCONNECT & ERRORS;
(5) Are there any good tips for diagnosing hard/soft disconnects and common errors or is the clash/disconnect report really good at identifying these.

MEASUREMENT CHECK:
(6) Is there a way while on iso view to measure the center point of one object to the center point of another and give you a XYZ value? The way we were shown is either to go on a side/top view and measure it from there and take the X,Y and Z coordinate individually.

Thanks for taking the time answering these questions!