Creating a Table of Contents or Drawing List Report – AutoCAD Electrical

AutoCAD Electrical has a built in Drawing List Report that can report any of the drawing properties within the active project.

Adding the Missing Manufactures to AutoCAD Electrical’s Catalog Database

This question keeps coming up. It’s on the Autodesk Discussion Groups, its a call I have answered several times on IMAGINiT’s support desk, and it was just posted on our own discussion group… Productivity Now Discussion Forum - Electrical Product Catalog Post

The default install of AutoCAD Electrical only includes a few manufactures. If pressing the catalog Lookup button only shows a few manufactures, my guess is the others aren't installed.

Go to the “uninstall a program” dialog from Windows Control Panel. Select AutoCAD Electrical and the press Uninstall/Change.
  

Shown below are the dialogs for both Electrical 2013 and 2014. Press Add or Remove Features.
   

Select all desired manufactures and then press Next through the next few dialogs. Be prepared to insert the media or point the installer to the downloaded (and extracted) files.
   

Mechanical Applications for AutoCAD Electrical

This isn’t really electrical in nature. However it is about AutoCAD Electrical, and I put a bit of time into this article, so I want this group to see it as well.

http://www.cadalyst.com/cad/autocad/mechanical-applications-autocad-electrical-16515

Remember to say “Thank You” on Monday. It’s so much more than a BBQ day.

Easy Simplified Catalog Database – AutoCAD Electrical

This question just came in… “Stan is there a way to export all the parts currently in a drawing set into its own small data base because we use the same parts over and over, and the ACAD Electrical data base is just to big to be searching over our network.”

This is not the first time I have been asked this. And in fact there is a neat little utility that does just this. It’s kind of hidden under the Other Tools drop down.
 

 

It will create ALL of the family tables even if no catalog entries are needed. The default location is the active project file. However this file could just as easily replace your default catalog.

Hope this helps.

Display of Internal Part Numbers On Symbols – AutoCAD Electrical

Last week a user asked me how to push the custom USER data to symbols. He created USER1 and USER2 attributes and then edited the catalog data expecting it to update. However this information is not pushed from the database. CAT and MFG are the only columns that push to symbols. The rest of the columns are pushed to reports but not to symbols.
So the question is… Is this possible? Yep. And you already have access to it. It’s in the AutoCAD Electrical help system. It’s in the form of a sample AutoLISP utility in the "API" section of the help under Section F: ace_get_cat_data Function. The text is at the bottom of this post if you can’t find it… I can’t seem to locate the API Help in release 2013.
This LISP is currently pulling USER1, USER2, and USER3 columns from the catalog and pushing them out to selected symbols with the same named attributes.
 

Creating Keyboard Shortcuts in AutoCAD Electrical

Having started using AutoCAD at release 10 I’m partial to hotkeys. However the marking menu has broke the right click menu/hotkey ability. For example I would right click on a component and then press ‘E’ and Edit Component would trigger from the right click menu. I know the marking menu eliminates the need for the hotkey… simply drag straight up and the command starts. But hey, old habits die hard right.
I decided to map some custom hotkeys. Most of the default alias keys are commands that are not used in AutoCAD Electrical. Take ‘E’ for example. By default this is Erase. It may make more sense to have that as Delete Component or Edit Component. Below are the steps needed to modify AutoCAD’s aliases. You may wish to keep the default aliases and add and ‘E’ in front of all your new Electrical aliases. Like EE for Edit  Component and ED for Delete Component

Adding Wire Numbers to Symbols

You may have symbols that require showing the wire number at each wire connection. This would be a manual process for each symbol. However adding an additional _X#TERM## attribute eliminates that need.

Note the underscore in front of the tag.

Here I simply copy and pasted the original wire connection attributes. I then added the underscore and then made them visible.
    
In this example I made my extra wire numbers font size 0.100 where everything else is 0.125.

And after an 'Swap/Update Block' and a new 'Wire Numbers' through the project, here it is!

Managing Projects Inside of AutoCAD Electrical

To take advantage of many of the features of AutoCAD Electrical you MUST be using project files. What are a few of these "features"? Well, any drawing to drawing relationships such as, source and destination arrows, parent-child relationships, and the Automatic Title Block Update cannot function without a project file. Basically anything that involves multiple drawings interacting together.

The project file is simply a text file that uses a .wdp extension. The name of the file is the actual project name. This text file stores the project properties, project descriptions, drawing descriptions, as well as a list of its drawings and their locations.

In release 2013 the project file also stores the subfolders created under the project.

The project file is typically stored in the same folder as the project drawings. However it is not necessary for all drawings to live inside this folder. If a drawing doesn't live inside the project folder, the project file will store the relative path from the project file to the drawing.

Presetting The Surfer's Zoom Distance in AutoCAD Electrical

The Surfer's zoom distance is typically perfect in the schematic. However when moving into panels it tends to zoom in much to far. If you have a panel template, this is something that can be set there as well.

Simply open your panel template and place a sample panel footprint. Then surf to it. Use the Zoom In/Out buttons as needed and then press Zoom Save. Delete the footprint and purge it from your template. That's it! Save this over your existing panel template. If you want to know where this setting is stored, press the 'Read More' link.

Blog News

Sorry for the lack of posts over the past week or so. I have been in the Autodesk Inventor world... I do have some Inventor Cable and Harness posts planned. And now this week I have moved into the world of AutoCAD Plant 3D. I sure wish some of Plant's features would make their way over to the Electrical side! Plant 3D is a very slick software package.

As for this blog, I have been opening many of the past posts and reposting them under their proper categories. For example: Creating a custom PLC style in AutoCAD Electrical was NOT listed under PLC. My categories have kind of evolved into what they are now and I plan on sticking with this latest set. I'm sure a few new ones will be added in time.