What's New in AutoCAD Electrical 2006?

Transcription

1 11/28/2005-5:00 pm - 6:30 pm Room:Pelican 2 (Swan) Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort Orlando, Florida What's New in AutoCAD Electrical 2006? Randy Brunette - Brunette Technologies, LLC MA15-2 You haven't upgraded in a while and are wondering what all the hoopla is about. Come and see for yourself as we cover the latest improvements in the popular AutoCAD Electrical 2006 program, (and a couple from AutoCAD Electrical 2005). About the Speaker: Randy has used AutoCAD in mechanical and electrical design applications for 19 years. He owns Brunette Technologies, L.L.C., and provides international support for AutoCAD and AutoCAD Electrical software, including custom programming, training, implementation consulting, and program development management. He has been involved in numerous beta testing programs and has been a top-rated instructor at several Autodesk University conferences. randy.brunette@brutec.us

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3 AutoCAD Electrical Launchpad Wait! Don t just close the dialog and don t just turn off the Display on start-up checkbox. At least not until you ve explored all the good features available here. I know you ve been fooled by some of these startup displays before, but this one has some cool features. Really. Let me prove it. I m sure you ll find it so useful that you may want to display at other times, not only at start-up. Or maybe you already turned the display off. To display the Launchpad at any time, click the Help pull-down menu and select Display Launchpad. Getting Started Manual If you re brand new to AutoCAD Electrical (ACE) and need to get started in a hurry, the first step is to get some training. I know. I can hear the groans already. No time, too expensive, etc. That s where the Getting Started Manual comes in. If you can t get trained, at least read through this manual, it will give valuable information on how ACE works including topics on inserting and editing ladders, wires, schematic components, PLCs, and wire numbers. You will cover how to add drawings to a project and add drawing descriptions. Creating panel layouts from the schematic drawings is also covered. The manual is a pdf file that gives you detailed steps with diagrams to accomplish all of the above. Each topic is kept brief, with simple instructions. This manual is not meant to replace classroom training, and does not cover some necessary topics, such as custom symbol creation, but does provide a reference to get you started. If you are not new to ACE, pass this little tidbit along to your co-workers who are, it will same you lots of explaining. 2

4 AutoCAD Electrical Newsgroup Maybe not new, but here s a newsgroup that I can t recommend enough. If you have a question, someone here has the answer. If they don t have the answer, there isn t one, at least not yet. This site is monitored, attended and contributed to, by the most knowledgeable people in the ACE world. From users with years of ACE experience to Autodesk personnel, the best show up here. Some of the most notable include: Nate Holt, Autodesk employee and original founder and writer of the ACE program. He has more experience than anyone. Besides knowing just about everything there is to know and being an excellent programmer, he s just a nice guy. Scott Reese, Autodesk Vice-President, in charge of AutoCAD Electrical. If you have a problem, he will do everything he can to help. With Nate, Joe Walsh, Jared Bunch and others, he has a wealth of resources to solve the problems you may encounter. Pat Murnen, another Autodesk Help person seems to work 24 hours a day, and always seems available to provide support. There are also non-autodesk users, such as yourselves, who monitor the site as part of their daily schedule both to learn and to help. I ve worked with many and don t want to leave any out, but they are all great. As with any public site, you will find a few curmudgeons, but hey, that s what makes life exciting. And if you didn t hear some of the pitfalls, this would be like Disney world. Frequently Asked Questions And speaking of questions, not only can you do searches on the ACE Newsgroup for discussion threads, but Autodesk collects the most commonly asked questions and compiled it into a document linked in the Launchpad. If you can t get to training, (and even if you do), this is the second step in your self-training. You can even find updated versions of the document on the ACE Newsgroup. 3

5 Can t find this well written document after returning from Autodesk University? (Shame on you!) Want another viewpoint? Check out the What s New link on the Launchpad. You ll find a brief summary of the new features, very similar to this document. Use the What s New link in the online Help system to give you more details and descriptions, including examples and links to related topics. Advanced Productivity Then Advanced Productivity section is a special Help section covering four of the most requesting advance topics for the implementation and use of AutoCAD Electrical. These sections of the Help file go into topics in more of an instructional style, explaining in-depth, the workflow of the topic in addition to the more straight forward fact presentation of the standard Help file topic. (An example of the Automated Pin Assignment topic is shown.) 4

6 Merge Utility Now you can lose your fear of upgrading to the new version of ACE and having to redo all of your important database customization work. Found in the Projects pull-down menu in the Extras flyout, the Merge Utility allows you to easily merge your existing ACE databases into the new updated databases supplied with ACE You can select any or all of the main ACE databases including the PLC, Catalog, Footprint, and Panel databases. With options to Merge New Only or to Overwrite existing Duplicate records you can control what is added and what is discarded. Backup files are automatically created before any editing is done by copying the existing destination file with a.bak extension. Vault Integration One of the key improvements to aid with Autodesk Vault integration is the supporting of relative paths within the project file. Previous versions of AutoCAD Electrical used only the absolute filename within the project file. This meant that the filename including the entire path, was stored in the project file. The drawback to absolute pathing is when checking a project into Vault and having someone else check it out, these directory names needed to avoid project file management issues. When using Relative paths, the relative filename (based on the location of the project file) is stored in the project file. If the drawing is located in the same directory as the project file, only the filename itself is stored. If the drawing is located in a different directory than the project file, the relative path based on the location of the project file is stored. For example if the project file is located in C:\Projects and the drawing is located in C:\Projects - the filename stored in the project file is Drawingname.dwg. C:\Drawings the filename stored in the project files is..\drawings\drawingname.dwg F:\Drawings the filename stored in the project file is F:\Drawings\Drawingname.dwg. 5

7 MDI Aware Just like most other Windows compliant programs and most other versions of AutoCAD, AutoCAD Electrical is not MDI (Multiple Document Interface) compliant. This means you can have several drawings open in a single session of AutoCAD, cutting and pasting between drawings without having to close one of them. Previously you could open several sessions of AutoCAD, each with a separate drawing open, but this used up a lot of the system resources. When moving between drawings, AutoCAD Electrical handles the MDI interface differently depending on the method chosen. When double clicking on drawings in the Project Manager, the selected drawing is opened and made current. Any open drawings remain open. When using the Next Drawing and Previous Drawing buttons, the current drawing is saved and closed and the selected drawing is opened and made current. When selecting a drawing from the Windows pull-down, the selected drawing is made current. Any open drawings remain open. The Surf utility saves the current drawing before opening the selected component drawing and making it current. Just a quick note, if you use double clicking in the AutoCAD Electrical Project Manager as your main drawing selection tool, you can end up with many open drawings. Be sure to check this frequently to keep your computer performance at optimum. Printable Help You can now print directly out of the Help menu system, printing portions or the entire Help system for reference. With the Contents tab selected, simple right-click over the topic or section you want to print and select Print. (Sorry, no printed manuals.) All information from the user manuals has been converted to an electronic format and added to the Help system. 6

8 Project Manager New for 2006 is the Project Manager Enhanced Secondary Window, (ESW). This interface is a sort of a cross between an Explorer file tree and an AutoCAD tool palette. With tool palette like functionality, you can Auto- Hide the ESW, having it reappear simply by moving your cursor over it. Docking options and transparency are also available. The Preview window can display either a thumbnail of the drawing or a text list containing the properties of the file, such as location, size, and last saved date. Several selected projects can be opened at one time, with one of them active for processing. Each project file can be expanded to display the list of drawings it contains. The drawing list can also be configured to show other important information such as Drawing Description, Section, and Subsection codes. The toolbar at the top of the Project Manager ESW also contains several other project wide commands for publishing the project, revising and resequencing, and task management for the project. Note: True Drag-and-Drop functionality is not available (yet.) Visual Sequence Indicators With the new wire sequence indicators you can now show how a circuit is to be wired right on the schematic, adding the shop wiring process. You can either insert the markers after the wiring has been drawing, thereby replacing the existing Tee connection with one of four angle indicators, or you can set a default for AutoCAD Electrical to use in the Drawing Configuration dialog box. This tool provides a graphical indicator only and does not automatically create the correct sequencing for use in reports. Note: This functionality is covered using the Wire Sequence tools and manually defining the wire sequence. 7

9 Starting designs with a panel layout drawing Extracting a list of components from your schematic for insertion onto the panel layout has long been a feature of AutoCAD Electrical. New is the capability of extracting a list of components from the panel layout for insertion onto the schematic. Combining these two functions, you can now start a design by placing long lead time items onto your panel layout. When you need to begin the schematic design, you can then extract a list of these components and insert them into the schematic. As the schematic design is completed, a component list can be extracted from the schematic and inserted into the panel layout to complete the details. Maybe just an equipment list is created in the preliminary design process. This can be used in either schematic or panel layout design to aid the component insertion process. Promis e Data Migration If you have been using Promise-e and are now making the switch to AutoCAD Electrical, the process has never been easier. New conversion tools allow you to convert single drawings or entire projects into the AutoCAD Electrical world. Graphical elements are maintained while current symbol attributes are mapped into AutoCAD Electrical intelligent attributes. Log files are maintained to store all modifications completed during the conversion process. AutoCAD Data Migration When it comes to converting your legacy drawings into AutoCAD Electrical intelligent drawings, there are several options available to you. Some standard tools such as the Black Box Builder have options for selecting existing text built into them. Conversion Tools The Conversion menus contain tools to help make legacy drawings AutoCAD Electrical intelligent. Tools exist to convert existing ladders, change text to wire numbers, and so on. If the symbols already exist as blocks, you can add the required electrical attributes, or you can simply completely swap out the existing blocks, replacing them with the appropriate AutoCAD Electrical blocks. You can even map existing attribute information from the legacy symbols into the matching attributes on the AutoCAD Electrical symbols. Tools like the Black Box Builder, build on the existing attribute to build new custom symbols by transferring the physical properties such as size and justification to the symbol. The Tagging and Linking tools take this another step further by also transferring the actual text value into the appropriate attributes. 8

10 Tagging Tools Tagging tools allow you to select an existing text entity on your drawing and convert it s value, positioning and other properties into an AutoCAD Electrical template conversion block. A generic electrical template block containing the standard AutoCAD Electrical attributes is inserted into the drawing at the insertion point of the existing text. The selected text is placed into the Tag1 attribute on the template block. Linking Tools The next step is to link other text entities and existing graphics to this symbol, continuing the process of adding existing drawing information into the conversion block. Linking tools allow you to pick individual pieces of text and map the values into the matching attributes in the conversion block. The properties of the text are transferred into the attribute, including size, justification, etc. From the Linking menus you can also add existing geometry and wire connections to the block, completing the transformation process. Update wire layers on source/destination arrows. When you link a Destination arrow to a Source arrow on a different wire layer, AutoCAD Electrical will prompt you to change the destination arrow wire layer to match the source wire layer. Note: This functionality does not work when inserting the destination arrow first, and then linking the source arrow to the miss-matched wire. AutoCAD Electrical 2005 Oldies, but Goodies Terminal Strip Editor The Terminal Strip Editor tool automatically creates accurate terminal strip drawings in either a graphical or table format. You can now manage and edit terminals used throughout an entire project through a simple interface. 9

11 PLC Module Builder Similar to the Black Box Builder, but specifically designed to address the requirements of PLC modules, the new PLC Module Builder tool is used to graphically add new PLC modules as they are introduced by manufacturers. That is, if the more than 2,000 PLC modules added to AutoCAD Electrical 2006 aren t what you need. Automatic Report Generation Typically every project requires you to run the same reports. For example: Bill of Material report that is placed on the drawing in a graphical table. Bill of Material report that is sent to the Purchasing department in an XML format. Wire From-To report that is sent to the fabrication shop in an ASCII format. Wire Number list report that is sent to the fabrication shop in an XLS format. The Automatic Report Generation tool helps you to create configuration files for each of these reports and to save them into a single grouping. A single command then creates all of the requested reports auto-magically. 10

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