Introducing the DEXPI 2.0 / DISC DEXPI Profile Viewer and Verification Tool

At Draga, engineering data is the day job, so it’s probably no surprise that side projects tend to end up there too. Draga’s CIO and co-owner has been building the DEXPI 2.0 / DISC DEXPI Profile Viewer and Verification Tool as a personal hobby project, and it’s now available online for anyone to try.

🔗 Try the tool: DEXPIViewer

The tool provides a way to view, inspect and verify DEXPI 2.0 XML information — including the structured objects, properties, relationships and sub-components contained in a DEXPI-based model. Rather than opening a raw XML file and hunting through tags by hand, the viewer lets you navigate the model the way it’s actually structured: by object, by relationship, and by the attributes that describe each element.

Support for the DISC DEXPI Profile

A core part of the tool is its support for the DISC DEXPI Profile, the symbol legend developed for the DISC DEXPI project. The profile is based on the symbol legends from Equinor and AkerBP, extended with additional symbols to support DEXPI transfer, and it does more than just define what a symbol looks like.

For every symbol in the legend, the profile defines:

• the graphical representation and a standardized origo point, so each symbol places and rotates consistently from a single reference coordinate
• label definitions and how DEXPI attributes are displayed as part of the symbol graphic
• connection node positions and types (piping, instrumentation, auxiliary, label), which can be validated against the modelled connections
• the mapping from each symbol to its corresponding DEXPI class definition and attributes

In effect, the DISC DEXPI Profile acts as a full legend for the P&ID — every symbol on the drawing is tied back to a formal class and attribute definition rather than being “just a picture.” The viewer applies this profile when rendering a drawing, so you can see exactly how a DEXPI model resolves into the correct DISC symbology.

To show this in practice, the screenshots below compare the same P&ID drawing rendered without the profile applied and with it applied — illustrating how the correct symbols, labels and legend information are added once the DISC DEXPI Profile is used to interpret the underlying model.

[Screenshot: P&ID drawing without the DISC DEXPI Profile applied]

[Screenshot: the same P&ID drawing with the DISC DEXPI Profile applied, showing symbols and legend information added]

Example files included in the repository

To make it easy to try the tool out, the repository includes example files covering both major diagram types:

• Profile-based P&ID drawings — example P&IDs using the DISC DEXPI symbol legend, demonstrating the full symbol-to-class mapping described above
• A PFD process drawing file — an example Process Flow Diagram, showing how the tool handles the process topology defined by the DEXPI Process model, separately from the plant/P&ID topology

Between the two, you can see how the same underlying DEXPI 2.0 approach supports both the plant engineering (P&ID) side and the process engineering (PFD/PBD) side of a project.

Putting it to the test: how far can the DEXPI 2.0 format flex?

The DISC DEXPI Profile shows how the DEXPI 2.0 XML format can be extended, through a profile, to define a complete symbol legend for a P&ID. The natural next question is: how far does that flexibility extend? Can the same profile mechanism support an entirely different drawing type?

To test this, a System Control Diagram (SCD) file made available through Equinor’s Data Sharing platform was used:

https://www.equinor.com/energy/data-sharing — Equinor ASA P&ID and SCD of Huldra volume

SCDs describe the control logic connecting instrumentation and equipment — a different drawing type from a P&ID, with its own symbols and semantics. Equinor’s dataset defines an SCD-specific profile that introduces its own system control elements, while still serialising to the same overall structure defined by the DEXPI 2.0 schema. In other words, the SCD profile isn’t a variant of the DISC DEXPI Profile — it’s a separate profile built on the same underlying DEXPI 2.0 mechanism, the same way DISC DEXPI Profile is built for P&IDs. That’s a strong signal that the profile concept in DEXPI 2.0 is genuinely general-purpose, not something tailored only to P&ID symbol legends.

The screenshot below shows one of these SCD files open in the viewer, including the object structure and the detailed information available from the DEXPI format.

[Screenshot: SCD file open in the viewer, showing object structure and detail]

Try it out

Hopefully this tool is useful to anyone working with process engineering data — PFDs, PBDs, P&IDs, SCDs, DEXPI, digital engineering workflows, data interoperability, or engineering information management more broadly. Being able to open a DEXPI file and immediately see whether it’s structurally correct, properly mapped to the DISC DEXPI Profile, and consistent in its symbol and attribute usage is a small thing that saves a lot of time downstream.

Feedback, questions, or example files to test against are always welcome.