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.

Access: Module Ribbon → Simulations panel → Show Path dropdown → Override Fluid Map (full editor) or Toggle Intermittent (one-click intermittent).

🎨 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
[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.

🟠 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
[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
[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 every Intermittent-scope override after Yes/No confirmation.

💡 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.

Choosing which linetype paints the intermittent curves

When you configure the intermittent linetypes for the project (Settings → Intermittent Linetypes), the window now 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, 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. The same gray dim, the same amber highlights, the same live count on the prompt:

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`	Confirm-and-wipe every intermittent mark.
`Quit` / Esc	Exit.

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

✅ 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 two 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.

Workflow:

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.