CADgneto

Resetting project properties to the drawing.

In AutoCAD Electrical, we deal with many different setting that may be affected project wide, or just in an individual drawing. This next step will force us to move all drawing properties to be equal as the project properties, to meet the drawing standards across on all pages selected. The steps are very simple on how to make a project uses the same standard all across.

1. Activate the project
2. Select all drawing in the project
3. Right click on one of the drawing and select “Properties” – “Apply Project defaults”. As seen below.
4. The process will up date all drawing and if you were to compare a drawing to a project you would end with the same result no difference.

Now, if you do any project up date, you can be certain that all component tag, wire number and other settings will be the same across your project.

Standardize it

CADgneto

Comparing setting between drawing and project

Well it’s been a while since I’ve written something on my blogs, I guess the holidays are design for you to rethink your last month of work and promote the information to yourself. Now a lot of note have been written in the past to realize what should go on my blog, but now I have a couple of minute so I though I would come up with some quick subject. One that came to mind is how easy it is to corrupt a project setting inside a drawing. Now the idea be hide the project file, is that we change the information project wide and not drawing wide so that we can have constancy. As time goes a project keep growing and changes keep coming back and forth in the standard. Now because we’ve maid so many changes at the drawing property level we need to sit and reevaluate our project setting and make sure that all drawing matches.

This tool I’m about to show it something that I think we should all know and learn to use a lot. The project contains our original idea on how a component tags, or wire numbers or even ladder spacing should be keep. Now as we insert new drawings the information of the project gets attached to that DWG. But as we draw our circuit or even as we do our panel there are a couple of things that we notice should be changed. The modification gets done at the drawing property with out notifying the project. Now as the next drawing get inserted those setting of previous drawing are not followed because they were never update to the main project. Again those changes are being done but some component might be miss compare to previous so now we are at a stage were all drawing and project might be entirely different.

The tool is called setting compare. In other word you are going to compare the setting of a drawing (DWG) to its own project, by the way you can only do one drawing at a time, with this command. This tool, will checks all the setting in your “Drawing Properties” and compare them to the “Project Properties”. Those that are different will be shown. From this point you may read the result of each and select which is too keep and which you want to change.

Step to follow to get to this command.

Step 1
Activating the command, like AutoCAD there are always more then one way to skin the cat. I am big on the RMC (Right Mouse Click), as seen on Figure 1. You can also reach this command under the project drop down menu, Setting Compare.

Figure 1

Step 2
Once you’ve decided to compare a drawing, you will notice the difference between your drawing Properties to your Project, as seen in Figure 2. All you need to do is select one or more of them and tell it to either match the Project or Drawing. When I say multiple select, I mean that you can shift select or ctrl select and match to the appropriate setting.

Figure 2

Compare it

CADgneto

Surf the Bill of Material a.k.a. BOM

I offer you a quick article on a new feature in AutoCAD Electrical 2008. ACADe has great tools to help you travel from page to page in your project. You may move one page at a time or surf, by searching specific attribute (Component Tag, Catalog Number and Wires Number), and find a schematic or panel component. For this tool to work we had the option to right clicking on a specific component or activating the surfer tool by selecting the icon or drop down menu and type what we were looking for.

Now in 2008, you can do all these plus search in the BOM inserted in a drawing created by ACADe. The steps are simple please read the following:

1. Activate the surfer tool
2. Browse in your BOM and select the appropriate text
3. Then the surf box will appeared as followed
4. Select the component then “Go To”

Keep in mind, the selection that you do will grab more then the tags you selected.

Surf’s up

CADgneto

AutoCAD Electrical 2008 is out (My new is late)

Why am I putting this article now? For some reason I can’t manage my time properly but I felt that I’ve been lacking in putting article. This week I will try to put a couple article plus this article will show you what is new in 2008. The list might seem short on the new command in AutoCAD Electrical 2008 but one thing is for sure, Autodesk finally have the terminal block working with the panel layout. Here are the new features:

- Autodesk DWG Product Recognition
- Surfable Reports
- Inserting Spare Terminals
- Direct to Terminal Wire Sequencing
- Multi-Level Terminals
- Terminal Jumpers

Check out the Autodesk website What's New

More to come,

Cadgneto

Plotting a project to PDF in ACADe

When it comes to plotting a project to PDF in ACADe, there is a bug when you use the DWG to PDF.pc3. The bug is that it saves the drawing to “_YES.pdf” for all of them, in other word the last plot wins.

Now if we want to print an ACADe project to PDF, we must use publish in AutoCAD. Here are some steps to get the project plotted to PDF. (These step are for drawing on the model tab)

1. Create an empty drawing, to create a layout template.
2. Right click on the model and select page setup manager.
3. In page setup manager, create a new page setup and call it PDF

4. In the page setup select DWG to PDF (Section 1 below)
5. Choose your paper size (Section 2 below)
6. Choose your pen style and anything else that you need. (Section 3 below)
7. Click OK

8. Start Publish. (under the drop down menu files)

9. Uncheck the layout tab, under “Include when adding sheets”.
10. Add all your drawing to this publish
11. Highlight all the drawing and select import in the Page setup/3D DWF
12. Find the drawing that you saved with the PDF page setup and import it

13. Select the publish option
14. Relocate the location of where you want the PDF to be saved
15. Select OK

16. Click Publish

F.Y.I. These steps can be used in regular AutoCAD

PDF it

Cadgneto

Bend Wires in AutoCAD Electrical 2007

AutoCAD Electrical came out with a nice enhancement tool in 2007, called bend wires. The tool is design to redirect a wire. Sometime we have wires overlapping each other and we would like to redirect it; with the bend wire tool you can, see picture below.

Bend wire is under the wire toolbar. You must select 2 wires on the same network (In other word it must be the same wire). You select the wire before the wire gaps, hence you need 2 selections, and it will bend the wire, as seen on picture above. The selection can be done anywhere but base on the picture above we must select before the wire gap.

Bend it like ACADe,

CADgneto

Choosing the right wire layer

Inserting a wire on its proper layer has improved greatly in AutoCAD Electrical 2007. It’s simple and easy. Here are the 3 easy steps.

1. Select the inset wire Icon

2. Type T for Wire type

3. Select the Wire needed

Like I said simple

Happy Canada Day,

CADgneto

Wire layer control

I got my first article on the new feature of AutoCAD Electrical 2007. I believe it’s important for you, the user, to understand this new feature. In the past we had to use the drawing configuration for the setting of our wire layer. Now a new tool has come out in 2007 regarding the wire layer, Create/Edit wire Type.

As you can see the picture under reveals the new tool to create wire layer. This table contains “Wire Color”=%C, “Size”=%S, followed by 20 user define table which table 1 through 5 are equal to %1-%5. These %* are used to help you create a standard name for your wires. As you can see bellow you have a section for layer name format, and that will automatically update the layer name table.

This tool simplify the creation of layer for your wires in less step, then 2006 or older, and also it’s easier to control. One thing that make this tool great, compare to the older version of AutoCAD Electrical, it offer you the option to choose which layer should be the default wire.

Keep your wires colored,

CADgneto

What’s new in 2007 Acade…

Finally I’ve got some little time. I promised some news on AutoCAD electrical 2007 and now is the time. Many articles will follow this one but I want to share some of the new feature in AutoCAD Electrical. Many improvements have been put into this release and I’ll be happy to share this information with you. Many of you might of visited the Autodesk website but I thought that I might share info on most feature with there own blog post.

Here is a list of existing post that will be coming in the near future, with other post in between of course.

- Wire layer control
- Wire tool enhancement
- The Connector Generator (Brand new tool)
- Editing tool enhancement
- Real time error check
- Enhance on the drawing properties
- Multiple wire bus
- And more to add to this list.

Here are some links to the Autodesk “What’s new” website:

Autodesk What’s New
Autodesk What’s New PDF

More to Come,

CADgneto

Autodesk 2006 Boot Camp

It’s been a while since my last post on my blog, but a lot has happen in the last couple of month. Besides putting a new engine in my little Geo Metro it was Autodesk new product launch. I just got back from the Autodesk 2006 Boot Camp, where we’ve be drilled with all the new product of 2007 plus the what’s new. I was in the Mechanical Division, and I learned about, AutoCAD, Autodesk Inventor, Autodesk Productstream and my new passion AutoCAD Electrical.

They are many wonderful tools that have been introduced for the 2007 release, in the vertical division. This has been one of my best boot camp so far. Kudos to Autodesk, they have finally made a great learning environment for all the reseller of North America. I got lots of positive during this Boot Camp and I hope to help you understand some of the new tools in ACADe.

My next articles that will follow this post will be base on some of the new feature in AutoCAD Electrical 2007. I believe that they are many good reasons to upgrade your previous version to 2007.

I would like to give many thanks to Autodesk for a great Boot Camp, and many thanks to Hilton Anatole (Dallas, TX) for there great service.

Back from a hectic month,

CADgneto