Fluid Map Overrides | AseptSoft Documentation

Fluid Map Overrides give you precise, drawing-specific control over what the fluidstream simulation sees. The automatic mapping is excellent in 95% of cases, but every drawing has the occasional edge case where a tank, pipe, or connection should be treated differently than the heuristics decide. Instead of editing the drawing to match the heuristics, you tell AseptSoft directly: include this entity, exclude that one, add a manual connection here, ban one there, mark this entity as intermittent.

Overrides are saved per drawing, never modify the drawing itself, and stay in sync with the project's normal save/load lifecycle. Open the drawing somewhere else, and the overrides come along.

This page covers two complementary layers of control:

The interactive Override Fluid Map editor, where you click individual entities and connections.
A set of scope-wide override settings — rules that apply to whole entity types, to every controlled valve, or to a whole phase — without picking entities one at a time.

Access: Module Ribbon → Simulations panel → Show Path dropdown → Override Fluid Map (full editor) or Toggle Intermittent (one-click intermittent). The scope-wide settings live in the Settings window.

🎨 The Override editor at a glance

When you launch Override Fluid Map, the rest of the drawing dims to gray and AseptSoft enters an interactive editing session. Every override on the drawing is shown with a coloured outline around its bounding box and a one-line label describing what it is.

Colour	What it marks
🟠 Orange — `INCLUDE …`	Entity force-included in the fluid map.
🔴 Red — `EXCLUDE …`	Entity force-excluded from the fluid map.
🟡 Amber — `INTERMITTENT …`	Entity force-marked as intermittent (its outgoing flow renders intermittent).
🟧 Orange edge	A user-added manual edge between two entities.
🟥 Red edge	A user-forbidden automatic edge that won't appear in the fluid map.

The command line offers a simple top-level menu: pick which kind of override you want to author.

Which override category to edit [Entities/Connections/Intermittent/Validate/Quit]

Entities — force entities into or out of the fluid map.
Connections — add manual edges, ban automatic ones.
Intermittent — mark entities so their outgoing flow renders intermittent.
Validate — re-run the fluid map immediately so you can see the effect.
Quit — exit the editor (Esc works too).

🟧 Entities — include or exclude

The Entities sub-loop forces the simulation to include or exclude a specific entity. Use this when the automatic classification or layer rules disagree with reality on that one drawing.

Entity-filter overrides: force entities INTO or OUT OF the fluid map\n[Include/Exclude/Clear/WipeAll/Back/Quit]

Action	What it does
Include	Pick an entity. From now on it's part of the fluid map even if its layer / classification / linetype would have skipped it. Force-included pipes actually carry fluid; the dim "no fluid" gray no longer applies.
Exclude	Pick an entity. From now on it's invisible to the fluid map and is rendered with the standard "no fluid" gray.
Clear	Drop the include/exclude override on a specific entity (its intermittent override, if any, is left intact).
WipeAll	Wipe every Entities-scope override after a Yes/No confirmation prompt.
Back	Return to the top-level menu.
Quit	Exit the editor.

💡 Per entity vs. per type. The Include / Exclude actions here target one entity you pick. When you want a whole category of objects treated as non-fluid (every polyline used as a drawing border, for example), use the Ignored Entity Types setting described further down — it applies the same idea to an entire entity type at once.

🟠 Connections — add or forbid edges

The Connections sub-loop is where you author manual edges between two entities or ban automatic ones that AseptSoft computed but you don't want.

Connection overrides: ADD manual edges or FORBID automatic ones\n[Add/Forbid/Clear/WipeAll/Back/Quit]

Action	Verb meaning
Add	Author a new manual edge between two entities. Pick the first endpoint, then the second; the orange edge appears with a label naming both endpoints.
Forbid	Ban an existing automatic edge. Pick an entity; AseptSoft cycles through every edge that touches it, highlighting one at a time in bright yellow with a `[1/3]` counter on the command line. Use Next / Previous to step between candidates and Forbid to ban the highlighted one. The impact line tells you the consequence ("forbidding it disconnects 4 entities from this anchor") so you understand what's about to happen.
Clear	Drop a previously-authored override (Add or Forbid) on a picked entity. AseptSoft cycles through that entity's overrides one at a time in bright yellow with a description on the command line; Drop commits the deletion. The cycle preview makes "which override am I about to remove?" answerable visually instead of by guessing handle numbers.
WipeAll	Wipe every Connections-scope override (Add + Forbid) after Yes/No confirmation.

💡 The cycle picker for Clear and Forbid uses the same Next/Previous muscle memory throughout the editor. The bright-yellow CANDIDATE highlight is reserved for the override currently under consideration; it won't be confused with the persistent orange/red shown for committed overrides.

🟡 Intermittent — mark an entity, paint its outgoing curves

The Intermittent sub-loop marks entities whose outgoing fluid should render with the project's intermittent linetype, even when the upstream pipes are continuous. Useful for sampling take-offs, drains, temporary purge routes, or anything else whose downstream side is intermittent by design.

Intermittent overrides: mark entities so their OUTGOING fluid renders intermittent\n[Mark/Clear/WipeAll/Back/Quit]

Action	What it does
Mark	Pick an entity to mark. Curves immediately adjacent to that entity render in the configured intermittent linetype on the next simulation; downstream curves return to normal.
Clear	Drop the intermittent mark on a specific entity.
WipeAll	Wipe intermittent marks for the active phase — with a choice of scope (see below).

💡 The mark applies to the curves immediately touching the entity — exactly what users mean when they say "this valve is intermittent" — not to everything the flow can reach downstream from it. A mark on entity X visually answers "why did you mark THIS entity?" right around X, while flow further downstream keeps its regular linetype.

Intermittent marks belong to a phase

Every intermittent mark is tied to the phase that is active when you make it, and to the specific P&ID it sits on. The same valve can be intermittent during one phase and continuous during another, which matches how real recipes behave.

📋 Example. In a CIP Rinse Cycle, a drain valve XV-301 pulses open and shut during the Pre-Rinse and Final Rinse phases, so you mark it intermittent there. During the Caustic Wash phase the same valve is held open and fluid runs continuously — so it stays unmarked in that phase. Each phase keeps its own list.

Behaviour	What it means for you
Each phase owns its own set	Marking an entity intermittent affects only the phase that is active at the time, on the P&ID you marked it on. Switching phases shows that phase's own intermittent marks.
Follows your active phase automatically	If you switch the active phase from the ribbon while the toggle loop is open, the editor follows along — the prompt and amber highlights update to the new phase without you reopening anything.
Carried forward when you duplicate a phase	Duplicating a phase copies its intermittent marks into the new phase as a starting point, so a phase built from a copy doesn't start empty. You then adjust the copy freely without disturbing the original.
Only visible while a phase is active	Intermittent visuals only make sense in the context of a phase. With no phase active, the toggle loop pauses with an explanatory message — you can still step Back, open Options, or Quit, but there is nothing to mark until you pick a phase.

Choosing which linetype paints the intermittent curves

When you configure the intermittent linetypes for the project (Settings → Intermittent Linetypes), the window offers a Render linetype dropdown alongside the list of recognised intermittent linetypes:

The list is what AseptSoft considers as "intermittent" when reading the drawing's existing linetypes.
The render linetype is the one AseptSoft uses to paint a curve intermittent itself (e.g. when adjacent to a force-marked entity).

Left blank, AseptSoft picks the first configured intermittent linetype as a sensible default.

⚡ One-click intermittent toggling

The full Override Fluid Map command is powerful, but for the most common workflow ("look at the drawing, click the few entities that should pulse in this phase, done") there's a faster route.

The Toggle Intermittent ribbon button (and the ASEPTSOFTToggleIntermittent command) drops you straight into a single-step toggle loop — every pick flips the picked entity's intermittent state for the active phase. The same gray dim, the same amber highlights, and a live count that names the active phase and how many entities are intermittent in it:

CIP Rinse Cycle — Pre-Rinse: pick entity to toggle intermittent (3 currently forced) [Options/WipeAll/Quit]

Keyword	Effect
`Options`	Hand off to the full Override Fluid Map menu — useful when you realise mid-session you want to do something else.
`WipeAll`	Open the wipe-scope sub-menu (see below) and confirm.
`Quit` / Esc	Exit.

There is no "Mark / Clear" disambiguation — the orchestrator already knows whether each entity is currently marked in the active phase, so the verb is implicit. One mental model, one click per entity.

WipeAll, with the right reach

Because intermittent marks live per phase and per P&ID, a blanket "wipe everything" would be too blunt. The WipeAll action therefore asks how far you want the wipe to reach, then confirms with a Yes/No:

Scope	What it clears
This phase (default)	Intermittent marks for the active phase on the current P&ID only.
This phase, all P&IDs	The active phase's intermittent marks across every P&ID.
All phases, this P&ID	Every phase's intermittent marks on the current P&ID.

⚠️ The default scope is the narrowest one (this phase, this P&ID), and every scope still requires an explicit Yes. A stray Enter will not clear more than the phase you are looking at.

🚫 Ignored Entity Types — type-level fluid control

Sometimes a whole kind of object should never be treated as fluid on a given project. Polylines drawn as borders, splines used for labels, a block class used purely as a permanent isolation point — picking each one by hand would be tedious. The Ignored Entity Types setting lets you set the rule once, for the entire type.

Access: Settings window → Ignored Entity Types (command ASEPTSOFTSETTINGSIgnoredEntityTypes). The setting applies per P&ID.

The window lists the AutoCAD entity types you can opt to treat as non-fluid — Line, Polyline, Arc, Circle, Ellipse, Spline, Block Reference, Solid, Region, Leader, and similar. Each type has a checkbox, and ticking it reveals a second, finer choice underneath: "Connect but always block fluid."

The three states a type can be in

State	Meaning	Use it when…
Unchecked	The type takes part in the fluid map normally. This is the default for every type.	The type is a genuine fluid carrier — ordinary pipes, fittings, valves.
Checked	The type is removed from the fluid map entirely. Entities of this type are not connected and do not appear during fluid stream.	The type is never fluid — polylines used as borders, splines used as callout leaders.
Checked + always block	The type still joins the map and carries tag-chain connectivity, but fluid never passes through it — like a permanently closed valve.	The type is fluid-relevant for tagging and reachability but must always block — e.g. a block class used as a fixed isolation point.

💡 The parent checkbox is the master switch: clearing it also clears the "Connect but always block fluid" sub-option, so a type can never be in a half-defined state.

Both checked variants gray out during fluid-stream visualization, exactly the way other non-fluid entities do — so the picture on screen always matches what the engine is doing.

Workflow: hide drawing-border polylines on a skid P&ID

Open the Ignored Entity Types window from Settings.
Tick Polyline. Leave the sub-option unchecked, because these borders are not fluid in any sense.
Click Save. The border polylines drop out of the fluid map; on the next fluid stream they appear grayed.

Workflow: a block class that must always block fluid

Open the Ignored Entity Types window.
Tick Block Reference, then tick Connect but always block fluid underneath it.
Click Save. These blocks stay in the map so neighbouring pipes remain reachable for tag chains, but fluid stops at them every time and they render grayed.

Ignored Entity Types window

The per-type list, the reveal-on-check sub-option, and the explanatory panel sit together in one compact window.

https://downloads.aseptsoft.ch/documentation/images/Fluidstream/ignored-entity-types.png

🧵 Controlled-Valve Linetype Override

When you want fluid that flows past a valve under instrument control to look visually distinct from ordinary fluid — a dashed or phantom linetype to signal "this segment is regulated" — the Controlled-Valve Linetype setting does it with a single checkbox and a linetype choice.

Access: Settings window → Controlled-Valve Linetype. The setting applies across the environment, so it follows you from drawing to drawing.

A valve is "under instrument control" when its state is one of the controlled-by-instruments states (binary on/off control, or modulating control). With this setting on, fluid travelling through such a valve is drawn in your chosen linetype from that valve onward — exactly as if you had set a fluid linetype override on those states by hand, but applied automatically to every controlled valve at once.

Workflow: distinguish regulated fluid downstream of control valves

Open the Controlled-Valve Linetype window from Settings.
Tick "Use a custom linetype when fluid passes a controlled valve."
Pick a linetype from the dropdown — for example a dashed linetype to mark modulated flow downstream of CV-202.
Click OK. The override takes effect immediately on the active P&ID — fluid past every controlled valve adopts the chosen linetype without reopening the module.

✅ Travels across drawings. The setting remembers both the linetype you chose and the linetype's full definition. If you open a different drawing that doesn't already contain that linetype, AseptSoft re-creates it automatically — the override looks the same everywhere, with no "linetype not found" surprises. This same resilience applies to every linetype-by-name setting in AseptSoft, including the per-state fluid linetype overrides.

Controlled-Valve Linetype window

A single enable checkbox and a linetype dropdown — the whole setting on one screen.

https://downloads.aseptsoft.ch/documentation/images/Fluidstream/controlled-valve-linetype.png

⚙️ Control Modules Line Weight — per-valve-type filter

The Control Modules Line Weight setting draws control-module valves with a heavier line so they stand out on the P&ID. Alongside the simple on/off-plus-lineweight choice, you can narrow which valve types the heavier weight applies to.

When you open the setting from the Control Modules entry point, an "Apply to valve types" section appears. It lists the same valve-type categories you already use when authoring states, with every type ticked by default. Uncheck the types you want to leave at the normal weight; the rest keep the override.

💡 The list stores the excluded types, so any valve type introduced later is included automatically — you only ever maintain the exceptions.

Workflow: thicken only the control valves

Open the Control Modules Line Weight setting.
Tick Enable custom lineweight and pick the line weight.
In Apply to valve types, uncheck any category that should stay at normal weight (for example, leave manual hand valves off the override and keep only the instrument-controlled types ticked).
Click Ok. Only the included valve types are drawn heavier; excluded types fall back to the drawing's default line weight.

Control Modules Line Weight window

The enable checkbox, the line-weight dropdown, and the collapsible valve-type filter.

https://downloads.aseptsoft.ch/documentation/images/Fluidstream/control-modules-line-weight.png

✅ Saving and seeing the result

Overrides participate in the normal AseptSoft save lifecycle: they're committed when you save the drawing, rolled back if you discard changes. The very moment you exit the editor the fluid map cache is invalidated automatically — your next view of the drawing reflects the new state without needing to toggle Show Path off and on.

If you want to validate immediately while still inside the editor, type Validate at the top-level menu — AseptSoft re-runs the fluid map and shows you the result on the spot.

🛡️ WipeAll always asks first

Every wipe action — whether on Entities, Connections, or Intermittent — gates on a destructive-default Yes/No confirmation:

Wipe ALL connection overrides? [Yes/No] <No>

A stray Enter at any prompt won't erase a session of work. To confirm, type Yes (or Y).

🏭 Pharma example: cleaning up a fluid map for a new CIP loop

You've drawn a new CIP loop on an existing skid P&ID. The fluid map looks mostly right, but a few issues stand out:

A short bypass valve doesn't get fluid — it sits on a layer the project has flagged as no-fluid.
AseptSoft inferred a connection between the CIP supply header and the skid drain that you don't want — they look adjacent in the drawing because of how the lines are routed but they're not physically connected.
The drawing's border polylines clutter the fluid stream.

Workflow:

Open Ignored Entity Types from Settings, tick Polyline (no sub-option), and Save — the border polylines leave the fluid map.
Click Override Fluid Map on the ribbon. The drawing dims.
Type Entities → Include → click the bypass valve. An orange outline + INCLUDE 2A4B7 label appear around it.
Type Back, then Connections → Forbid → click the supply header. AseptSoft cycles through its edges in bright yellow; you press Next until the candidate edge to the drain lights up, the impact line confirms it would only disconnect the drain. Type Forbid. A red edge appears.
Type Validate. The simulation re-runs: the bypass valve now shows the correct fluid colour, and the spurious connection to the drain is gone.
Type Quit. The fluid map cache is invalidated automatically; your next look at the drawing reflects the new state.

Saving the drawing persists the overrides; opening it on another machine brings them along.

Fluidstream Simulations — how the automatic fluid map is built.
Fluidstream Mapping Strategies — the heuristics that overrides override.
Fluidstream Troubleshooting — when to reach for an override vs fix the drawing or the rules.