Plant 3D compared to Inventor

[Nanaia]

I do piping design and was wondering what the similarities are between the Plant 3D (that my current employer is considering getting) and Inventor in regards to locking pieces together. I currently use CADWORX and would gleefully chuck it out the window. I have several years experience with Inventor at a previous employer and had grown rather fond of it. I liked being able to lock pieces together to insure the important connections not be separated. Can this be done in Plant 3D? If it gives you the ability to locate the beginning of the pipe route and the end of the pipe route and flagging obstacles along the way it would be a dream come true!

[AetrioEngMD]

Yes absolutely. Entire line numbers can even be locked. Using start point and end points will define the flow and the output of your isometrics.
Be warned though, Plant 3D has a ton of setting up and configuring to do before its usable. Especially if you have your own title blocks for use with PID's, Isometrics, etc...
I came over from CadWorx and to be honest I miss some of the things it could do due to familiarity sake. Like 2drep. I miss 2drep, and the structural aspects of CadWorx. Plants 3D's structural is awful but it's there...kinda.
Plant 3D has it's own ortho creation process I find to be neat but quite slow. Doesn't work very well with dynamic 3D blocks either.
Plant 3D can be frustrating at times but I consider it part of the learning curve. It does have some features that leave you scratching your head, thinking it's going to do one thing but actually does something completely different.
The Report Creator is very neat, again though it requires some setup, definitely not made for beginners but not impossible either.

At the end of the day I would stick with CadWorx if already a license holder and subscription member IF money isn't a problem. CadWorx is not a cheap program and you have to buy AutoCad anyway just to run it.
That's why I went with Plant 3D which also comes with a host of other software for an awfully reasonable annual price and I just deal with the things that annoy me. Hoping they get fixed up with a patch or new release.
Speaking of which they seem to be fairly active in working with people to make the program better which is pretty great.

I never used Inventor, to be honest I never would have thought of using it for this application so I can't really comment on it.

Hopefully you found something helpful in there.