What you should do is create basic templates and UDTs for each device/equipment in your system that matches up with the AOI for said device/equipment, doing it in such a way that I can add multiple different instances to the same window.
For instance, for a pump it would be something like:
- pump port location (INT 0-3)
- pump port direction (BOOL - horizontal/vertical)
- base location (INT 0-3)
- label string (STRING)
- instance path (STRING - path to UDT instance)
(for vision) I use basic rectangles for pipes, instead of the more detailed ones. I use the built-in P&ID pipes for perspective. I've also developed a method of using coordinate containers for process layouts/overviews on Perspective.