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Coinciding with the acquisition of VIA Development, Nate joined Autodesk in March of 2003 after a decade stint as an entrepreneur following a two-decade stint as a controls engineer and software applications developer at Owens-Corning. Nate is now the lead product architect for AutoCAD Electrical. He loves this stuff.
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Switch to AutoCAD Electrical Boosts Manufacturer
September 19, 2007 02:04 PMby Nate HoltAn interesting article by Kenny Dunhoft of R.A. Jones & Co., a manufacturer of high-speed packaging equipment, appears in Control Design magazine. Link to it here.
According to the article, one of the key factors in their success was developing in-house expertise -- exposing a couple key people to in-depth training on the product. They in turn provided the in-house leadership in moving the implementation along for the whole team.
I can confirm that this approach is a good one... I've seen it work before. You get one or two enthused users in a company really up-to-speed. Then, from this point forward, they can internally resolve issues and such that come up during the company's implementation of the product - they can "cheer" the team on.
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AutoCAD Electrical 2008 Service Pack 1 - now available
September 18, 2007 07:59 PMby Nate HoltService Pack 1 for AutoCAD Electrical 2008 has been released and can be downloaded here. It is also available for live update through the Communication Center.
Here is a listing (from the included "read me") of issues resolved by this Service Pack:
NOTE: AutoCAD Electrical 2008 Service Pack 1 includes the AutoCAD 2008 Service Pack 1. For issues resolved by the AutoCAD 2008 Service Pack 1, please see the appropriate service pack readme located on the Autodesk support web site.
Cross-Referencing
Incorrect Cross-Reference information can be displayed for graphical and table formats if contact symbols on multiple drawings happen to have identical handle numbers.
Unable to surf on Cross-Reference Exception report.
Cross-Reference Error report incorrectly returns error messages for Form-C relay contacts.
Tag value in a table cross-reference style is not updated when parent component is moved.
Long cross-referencing Mtext values can include unexpected characters when more than twelve references are listed.
Child cross-referencing text can be incorrect under certain circumstances during re-tag with parent tag override.
Real-time cross-referencing based upon pin number edits may not update properly in IEC-tagging mode for contacts marked with non-blank location attribute values.
Electrical Audit
Electrical Audit reported duplicate wire ID errors if the Wire ID of any cable marker was left blank.
The Go To option on the Electrical Audit dialog does not respond properly in the Russian and French versions.
Find/Edit/Replace
Find/Edit/Replace Component Text fails to save individual manual edits of non-blank attribute values.
Find/Edit/Replace Component Text can fail to update the first two description values under certain conditions.
Insert/Edit Component
Multi-pole component insert of all children contacts (i.e. no parent) is incorrectly hiding attributes on all child poles instead of keeping the first childs tag and description and cross-reference attributes as visible.
When editing schematic terminal numbers on pre-AutoCAD Electrical 2008 drawings, panel terminal representations tied to the same schematic wire number could be incorrectly updated.
Help button returns incorrect message The page cannot be displayed when inserting a terminal under IEC tagging mode.
Add/Modify Association dialog shows duplicated terminal numbers when using the OK-Repeat option.
Inserting an item number balloon with a very short leader can fail.
Parametric connector insert can fail to take the Search for PLC I/O address on insert option into account.
The catalog BOM Units edit box data field is no longer forced to upper case.
OSnap setting was incorrectly reset between each component insert when inserting multiple footprints from schematic list.
Show/Edit Miscellaneous option locks up when selected block contains attributes added using the Add Attribute command.
Unable to change the value of a Fixed tag on a PLC I/O module from the Edit Component dialog.
When using IEC tagging mode, changing a description on a panel footprint fails to update description on parent component.
Insert Component always showed slide files with a black background.
Miscellaneous
Multi-pole component pin number assignments not always matching equivalent single pole insert assignments.
Panel Wire Annotation could fail to find a match-up with related schematic components under certain conditions.
Incorrect translation display of several phrases in various dialogs.
Multiple cable marker insert could reference an incorrect table during catalog data lookup.
Pin values on a second Form-C contact can get assigned incorrectly.
Duplicated wire annotation can get placed on panel footprint symbols on non-active drawings.
API call WD_INSYMX fails to insert designated block if there is not a vertical version of the block present on the drawing.
On some systems with .ttc font files present, the Modify Symbol Library command can fail.
When using IEC tagging mode, Update from Spreadsheet feature may incorrectly remove a leading hyphen character from component tag references.
Editing a location box using grips and right-click could cause an application lock up.
Copy Installation/Location Codes command can fail to find and update a panel footprints related schematic components.
Form-C contact pin numbers may not assign correctly when applied to single N.O. and N.C. component symbols.
Edit function on Surf dialog fails when surfing on a single PLC I/O point.
Signal arrows created as Dynamic Blocks are not being recognized as AutoCAD Electrical symbols.
Mark/Verify Drawings does not correctly process single PLC I/O point components.
Swap Block fails to retain the attribute location for component tags that are flagged as Fixed.
Swap Block fails to retain components Cross-Reference override values.
Move Component can cause Installation and/or Location values to get copied to component tag.
In IEC tagging mode, using Move Component to move a parent component can cause the Location value to be removed from the tag.
In IEC tagging mode, if Location and Installation values are blank, Child Location/Description Update may fail to find and update related panel footprints.
Show Terminal Associations failed to display complete association details in the command line.
Freshen button on Schematic Wire Number -> Panel Wiring Diagram dialog is sometimes inappropriately enabled.
PLC
Renaming a PLC module in the PLC Database File Editor causes application lock up.
PLC Database File Editor not allowing a new PLC module series to be created or the first module added to an empty series table.
Unable to delete PLC modules from the PLC Database Editor.
Some new Types added to the PLC database will not get retrieved from the database when accessed by the PLC Database File Editor.
Adjusted labels for columns 3 and 4 in the Spreadsheet to PLC I/O Utility and default spreadsheet.
Split PLC failing if run on a PLC I/O module that has a fixed tag-ID attribute value.
Incorrect IEC-mode tag can get assigned to a child single PLC I/O point when using the Parent/Sibling selection.
Spreadsheet to PLC I/O Utility I/O incorrectly listed style 0 as a valid selection from the drop-down lists.
Spreadsheet to PLC I/O Utility can fail soon after displaying and dismissing the column assignment dialog.
Spreadsheet to PLC I/O Utility saves the path to the drawing template file incorrectly.
Projects
New Drawing command may truncate a file name that contains multiple period (.) characters.
New Drawing command can fail if the selected template drawing is marked read-only.
When creating a new project, the default Linex descriptions labels are displayed instead of any customized set.
Project properties does not retain spaces in the Reference Separator for Cross-Reference format.
Project Manager does not allow drawings to be added to a project that begin with an equal (=) sign character.
On AutoCAD Electrical startup, projects are randomly sorted in the Project Manager.
Project Manager does not display Sheet Number values for drawings listed in non-active projects.
Project Tasks fail to update if there is an embedded apostrophe character () in the project name or project path.
Running a Vault related command on a project before AutoCAD Electrical is completely loaded or without highlighting a project can cause a Fatal Error.
Reports
Panel Bill of Material in Full: include schematic components mode can double-up the reported quantity of certain items.
From/To report is ignoring the defined wire sequence or implied angled-tee marker sequencing under certain conditions.
Saving a Panel Bill of Material to a csv file format can fail if either the LOC or INST fields are included in the displayed report.
Automatic Report Generation can fail when using the Force to Maximum Rows options.
Panel Bill of Material report can report incorrect terminal quantities if multiple terminal strips are inserted.
Automatic Report Generator does not use the Sort field defined in the Component Report .set file when generating the report.
Panel and/or Schematic Bill of Materials reports saved in XML file format have missing data and data fields.
Saving a Panel Bill of Materials report to a CSV file format fails to output the Tags values to the file.
Unable to use the Surf command on a report table that uses a True type font.
Retag/Resequence
When Resequence Item Numbers is run on footprints that contain WIPEOUT entities, the WIPEOUT entities do not auto-regenerate properly.
Retag Components command can fail to assign PLC I/O addressing based tags to components.
Retagging stretched components can result in incorrectly formatted tag assignments.
Signals
Unable to surf on Signals Error Report.
Unable to insert Source or Destination wire arrows on closely spaced wires.
Update Signal References can sometimes trigger a duplicate wire number when an in-line wire number is present.
Tagging
Automatic incrementing of text string values can return unexpected values if the source includes an embedded hyphen (-) character. Areas of the application that are affected by this include:
Ladder line references
Sequential wire numbering
Sequential component tagging
Re-sequencing item numbers
Increment and decrement buttons on various dialogs
Terminal Strip Editor
Roll over tool tip fails to display for terminal strips listed on the Terminal Strip Selection dialog.
After creating a new terminal strip and inserting it, the Terminal Strip Dialog does not re-open.
CTRL+Left mouse click on a selected row fails to unselect it.
Terminal footprints are placed on the active layer instead of the one defined in Panel Configuration.
The terminal strip location can shift after sorting and rebuilding the strip.
Inability to distinguish distinct terminal strips under certain conditions where text substrings can resolve to the same numeric value.
Double clicking on a tabular terminal strip data row canl cause the application to lock up.
Component connections marked Internal and External are sometimes not reported correctly.
Rebuilding a terminal strip incorrectly removes the item number assignment.
Tabular Terminal Strip (Table Objects) cannot be set up to contain only two columns.
Wires/Wire Numbers
Unique wire numbers are placed on both sides of a connector symbol even when the connector is designed for no wire number change.
Blank lines at the bottom of the default.wdw file can cause Change/Convert Wire Type to fail.
Angled Tee markers inserted during Insert Wire or Insert Ladder are incorrectly oriented.
Wire Sequence using Wire Tee markers can report incorrectly if daisy chained source/destination arrows are used.
Graphics to Show Internal/External Connects are too small when in IEC mode.
Trim Wire can leave multiple instances of copied wire numbers.
Project wide automatic wire numbering can fail if the specific wire number block cannot be located on disk (even if block reference is present on the drawing).
Project wide automatic wire numbering can insert wire number leaders even if the Never use mode is selected in the Drawing Properties.
Editing a wire number on a wire that contains a wire source can lead to mis-matched wire numbers on the Source and Destination wires.
Toggling an existing wire number to in-line does not always hold its current position.
Move Wire Number can fail to move an in-line wire number.
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Presetting your Surfer "Zoom" factor - AutoCAD Electrical
September 14, 2007 11:55 PMby Nate HoltThe Surfer is a cool tool. But the first time you surf to something on a non-active drawing, the surf "zoom up" factor may not be appropriate for the detail found on that drawing type.
Perhaps you're surfing from a motor starter coil on the schematic to the physical motor starter representation on the panel layout. Surfer might end up looking close-in, right on top of the tag-ID attribute on the footprint. You can easily zoom out a bit and then hit the "Zoom Save" button on the Surfer dialog to save this zoom setting.
From then on, this won't happen again on this drawing - Surfer will "know" the appropriate zoom factor each time it returns to this drawing.
But wouldn't it be nice to have your AutoCAD Electrical-compatible schematic and panel layout template drawings already set up with the appropriate Surfer "zoom factors" in place? Here's how.
Step 1 - Save a good "zoom" factor value.
Surf to a component or footprint on the target drawing type, adjust the zoom in/out until you're happy, and then select the "Zoom Save" button. This saves the current "zoom magnification" factor as an "Xdata" value on your drawing's WD_M block (invisible block used by AutoCAD Electrical for storing drawing-specific settings).
Step 2 - Find the drawing's WD_M block insert.
Now you need to figure out what the Xdata value was (that was just saved to the drawing's invisible WD_M block). Close the Surfer dialog. Type ATTMODE at the command prompt, hit [Enter], type in a value of 2, hit [Enter] again. This will make all attributes "visible". Pan down to near the 0,0 point on your drawing.
You should find a column or two of tiny text floating in space. One of these is the WD_M block's invisible attributes and, if there's a second smaller column, the panel settings WD_PNLM block. We're interested in the taller list that is the WD_M block's attributes.
Step 3 - List the Xdata found on this WD_M block insert.
Select the AutoCAD Electrical "Xdata editor" tool from the "Projects" pull-down menu --> "Extras".
Pick on the taller column of attributes. If you've done the Surfer "Zoom Save" on this drawing, you should see an entry with a "VIA_WD_SURF_ZOOM" label.
Note the value for this VIA_WD_SURF_ZOOM entry. We're done here. Type ATTMODE at the command line and change the value from 2 back to 1 (normal display of attributes).
Step 4 - Modifying the template drawing with this Xdata value.
Now open up your template drawing (of the same type - i.e. schematic or panel layout). It needs to have the WD_M block already in place. Make all attributes visible per Step 2 above. Re-invoke the Xdata Editor tool (per above) and pick on the WD_M block's column of attribute values. Select the "Add New" button. Enter in the Xdata name shown below and the value that you found in step 3. Select "OK" and "Save Changes" and then save your modified template.
That should do it. The zoom factor should now be automatic for any new drawings that you create using this pre-set template.
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I know, I know... you're wondering why AutoCAD Electrical uses Xdata tags with a "VIA_WD" prefix, right? Answer: legacy.
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Constructing an AutoCAD Electrical project "Zip" utility
September 14, 2007 05:50 AMby Nate HoltThere is already facility in the product to do this but it requires some dialog picks to select and execute. Let's say what you really want is a totally command-line-driven function - absolutely no prompts. Maybe you want to add it to a toolbar button or call it from some automated script program or equivalent. You want to just pass 1) the name of the AutoCAD Electrical project to archive/zip and 2) the full filename of the zip (or .rar) file to create.
Both the "zip" and "rar" utilities have command-line versions. They seem to be similar in that the key is to construct a small ascii text file listing the full filenames of what to include in the archive. This temp file is passed as one of the archive utility's command-line parameters.
Using the AutoCAD Electrical API, it's pretty simple to get a list of all the drawings in either the active project or some other named project. Write these out to an ascii text file along with the project's ".wdp" filename itself, and then pass it over to the zip utility.
Here is the AutoLISP version of just such a utility. It is set up to use a handful of the published AutoCAD Electrical API calls. About half-way down is where the API is called to read in the project .wdp file and collect the full drawing file path names. These are then dumped to a temp file called wdzip.tmp. The projects .wdp filename is added to this list. Then the startapp function is called. This invokes the command-line version of the archive utility and passes the temp file name. It seems to work.
Testing
If you want to try this, download the file here. With AutoCAD Electrcial running, type APPLOAD at your command line and browse to the downloaded file. Load it.
Now you're ready. Here is the command syntax:
For active project, it's this: (ace_zip_project nil zipfilename)
For non-active project, it's this: (ace_zip_project wdpfname zipfilename)
Use single forward slashes or double backslashes. Note that the zip utility may have issues if one of the drawings you want to include in the archive is active on your screen.
Example - zip the active project: (ace_zip_project nil "c:/customer/1234.zip")
Example - zip nonactive project: (ace_zip_project "c:/projects/cust/5678.wdp" "c:/customer/5678.zip")
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Index to 64 AutoCAD Electrical utilities
September 11, 2007 08:55 PMby Nate HoltThis first blog year-and-a-half went quickly. It's been fun. I really appreciate the privilege to (try to) respond to your questions and suggestions.
About six months ago I posted a simple index to the 52 or so utilities that had been published on this blog in its first year. Now, we're up to about 64, so here's an updated list (starting with most recent).
Updating drawing set parameters from the Project's scratch database
SS->PLC I/O utility - adding auto title block update
European-style Terminal/Cable connection charts
Matching cable tag-IDs to connected components
Auto wire number tag removal on cabled wire networks
Flipping attribute justification on a mass scale
Customizing the Drawing Index Sheet
Vectoring existing projects to reference ACE 2008 libraries
Flipping to In-line wire number tags
Wire angle connections to dots - simple swap utility
Titleblock Update - Previous/Next Sheet Numbers
Tracing Polyline-connected Components
Recovering Corrupted Wiring in AutoCAD Electrical
Making the Part Number fit the Relay Contacts used - AutoCAD Electrical
Smart Title Block Swapping with AutoCAD Electrical
Component tagging by "Pick Order" in AutoCAD Electrical
Terminal Plan report - controlling the "field" wiring side in AutoCAD Electrical
Auto-mapping "Power" and "Control" contact pin assignments in AutoCAD Electrical
Updating AutoCAD Electrical "Web links" - Pat Murnen's neat solution
Enhancing AutoCAD Electrical's Tabular Terminal Strip Layout
Bypassing AutoCAD Electrical's Automatic Wire tag-ID assignments
1-line Diagrams and linked MCC layouts: AutoCAD Electrical
Creating Special Wire From/To Annotation - AutoCAD Electrical
Repeating In-line Wire Number Tags with Auto-update
Discrete Cross-referencing on Large Schematic Symbols
Writing to Block Attributes in un-opened Drawings - Example App
AutoCAD Electrical's Modify Symbol Lib util - Pushing it beyond its limits
Linking AutoCAD Custom Drawing Props back to AcadE Proj Mgr
When one Tag-ID isn't enough
Comparing project defaults to all drawings at once
Incrementing Line References - customizing the "user" symbol
How to pull the 10 "user" attributes on a wire number into the From/To report
Terminal assignments based upon Cable core indices
Wire From/To - limiting to certain component type
Catalog Lookup - Browsing on Internal vs. Manufacturers part numbers
Altering the twist in Twisted-pair symbols
How to Alias AutoCAD Electrical commands using the ACAD.PGP file
Multi-wire Bus Command - controlling the default count and spacing
Wildcard Filtering in Reports
BOM Report + Component DESC1-3 Text
Multi-Language Electrical Component Tagging
PLC I/O Wire Numbering based upon "Slot" + I/O Pin Number
Catalog Lookup - table name confusion
Edit Wire Number Dialog - Tip: holding in new position
Example of mass update of SHEET assigments
Automatic Display of Internal Part Numbers on Electrical Components
Angles to Dots (IEC angled tee symbols to dot conversion)
Special PLC Address-based Wire Numbers
A couple SS->PLC I/O Tricks - Pin number assignments
Migrating PLC point descriptions back to overall module representation
Dual Catalog Lookup: Preferred and Everything else
Mirror Tears - flipping orientation of inserted components
Customized INSERT PLC Module Command
User Struggle with Reversing Starter - WDTAGALT approach
Adding unused core/conductors to Cable From/To report
Flipping between "Shop floor" and "Customer" tags
Instant "Tags used" listing
Attribute Edit > 255 characters ( ? )
Rolling your own brand of Signal cross-reference annotation
Writing relay contact references grouped by catalog number out to Excel
ACE2006/2007 project file compatibility with ACE2004/2005
Hiding subsets of rarely used catalog lookup entries
Multiple ASSYCODE trick
Trick with Type 0 Pin list -
Updating drawing set parameters from the Project's "scratch database" - AutoCAD Electrical
September 11, 2007 05:30 PMby Nate HoltThis specific issue has come up a couple times lately, most recently about three hours ago: the user has a large AutoCAD Electrical project set. He needs each drawing's "SHEET" number assignment to be adjusted. The adjustment is not something that the existing AutoCAD Electrical sheet number re-sequence can do... the customer really needs to go in and manually edit each drawing's sheet number value.
The solution does not seem attractive... click on each drawing listed in the AutoCAD Electrical project manager window, select "Properties", type in the new sheet number assignment, save, and then repeat over and over.
Better Way
But there is another way to do this. The SHEET number attribute value assignment (along with a few other drawing-specific settings) are automatically extracted into the project's "scratch database" file. This file is in Microsoft Access format.
So, how about editing this database file and then somehow pushing all the new SHEET assignments back to the project drawing set?
Not a problem. Here's how (note: you need a copy of Microsoft Access to do this):
Step 1. Make your project "active" in the AutoCAD Electrical project manager window, highlight it, and then note the project database name in the lower part of the window.
Step 2. Made a renamed copy of the scratch database file. Maybe just put an underscore in front of it. In this example, we're using the demo "iecdemo" project, so I've made a renamed "_iecdemo.mdb" copy of the database file.
Step 3. Open the copied file in Microsoft Access. Go to the FILETIME table.
Step 4. Edit your project drawing's sheet numbers as displayed in the SH column. Save the edited file.
Step 5. Back in AutoCAD Electrical select the "Update from Scratch Database" command (on the schematic report toolbar flyout or on the "Projects" pull-down menu as shown here.
Step 6. Browse to the edited COPY of the scratch database file. Select the "FILETIME" toggle and hit OK.
Step 7. Now select project-wide update on the next dialog by selecting all the drawings for processing and hit OK.
That should do it.