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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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Match Wire Number Text to Wire Color - AutoCAD Electrical
April 22, 2008 09:03 AMby Nate HoltHere is a simple user request that finds a happy solution using the AutoCAD Electrical "API". A small AutoLISP utility with a few embedded AutoCAD Electrical API calls does the trick.
The Request
Out-of-the-box, AutoCAD Electrical pushes all wire number text out to the user-defined layer under "Drawing Properties". In the example drawing below, the wire numbers all appear yellow because the defined WIRENO layer itself has been set to default to yellow.
But the user prefers to see the wire number take on the color of the wire it is tied to. So wire numbers 59, 60, and 61 display as gray, 64 and 65 red, and the rest white.
So, how to do this? All that is needed is a little post-processing utility to find wire number attributes, find the layer of the wire that the wire number ties to, and flip the attribute's layer to match that wire layer.
The AutoLISP Utility
Here is one way to do it. This AutoLISP utility includes a half-dozen calls into the AutoCAD Electrical API.
Download file from this link, rename to wn_textcolor.lsp
files/21301_21400/21353/file_21353.lsp
To Use
Download the utility and rename it to wn_textcolor.lsp. APPLOAD it. Then type WD_TEXTCOLOR [Enter] at the command line.
Result
Here's the "after" version:
The utility should also find and move the "extra wire number copies" and any wire number leaders.
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Autodesk University 2008 - LAST Call for Papers
April 21, 2008 07:54 AMby Nate HoltPlease submit your AutoCAD Electrical presentation proposal(s) online, as soon as possible (deadline April 27, 2008), at the "Call for papers" website: http://au.autodesk.com/event/speaker_cfp/So, if you:- Have the communication skills, technical expertise, and relevant experience using AutoCAD Electrical….
- Want to share your knowledge of a favorite topic—from tips and tricks, customization, new-user tutorial, or maybe even a look at a topic such as AutoCAD Electrical and sustainable design….
- Are motivated to bring success to your peers….
… Then Autodesk wants to hear from you—now!A speaker honorarium is also provided. -
Autodesk University 2008 - Call for Papers
April 21, 2008 07:49 AMby Nate HoltPlease submit your AutoCAD Electrical presentation proposal(s) online, as soon as possible (deadline April 27, 2008), at the http://au.autodesk.com/event/speaker_cfp/guidelines/types/So, if you:- Have the communication skills, technical expertise, and relevant experience using AutoCAD Electrical….
- Want to share your knowledge of a favorite topic—from tips and tricks, customization, new-user tutorial, or maybe even a look at a topic such as AutoCAD Electrical and sustainable design….
- Are motivated to bring success to your peers….
… Then Autodesk wants to hear from you—now!A speaker honorarium is also provided. -
Help Wanted
April 9, 2008 11:13 PMby Nate HoltThe AutoCAD Electrical team is looking for customers who would be interested in helping to shape future releases of AutoCAD Electrical by attending periodic webcasts. The primary objective of these meetings would be for you to work directly with the AutoCAD Electrical team to gather your requirements, input, and suggestions regarding potential product enhancements. Prior to the events, you would receive an invitation with the details of the meeting as well as a high level agenda of the topics that will be discussed during the meeting. Participation is completely voluntary, but in order to participate in these discussions, you will be required to first sign our Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA).
If you are interested in participating in some of these meetings, please first complete the survey which you can access by clicking the link below:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=eoH3_2bL9p5DwWs0RuVVm93w_3d_3d
Here are some answers to questions you may be asking yourselves right now:
Q.) Where are these events held? Do I have to travel for them?
A.) These events are held via a webcast presentation and conference call, so there is no need to travel and all you would need is internet access and a telephone.
Q.) What is required of me if I attend one of these events?
A.) Nothing, other than sending the requested information, signing and sending back the NDA, and calling/logging into the presentation. These events are completely voluntary and if you are not interested in a particular topic, or are just too busy at the time of the meeting, that is fine, you don’t have to attend. You can just wait for the next topic and discussion to take place and attend that meeting if you are available. Please keep in mind that our purpose of hosting these discussions is to help us ensure that we are meeting your needs with the potential product enhancements that are discussed.
Q.) Ok, so I don't have to attend every discussion that I receive an invitation for, but for those that I do, how much of my time will it take?
A.) We completely understand and respect how busy everyone is. Our goal for these events is to keep them to a 1 hour timeframe. Sometimes, the discussions may run over a little when many people have feedback they would like to provide, but we fully understand that not everyone may be able to continue to participate past an hour. We want everyone who joins the discussions to feel free to voice their opinions and to provide their input during these discussions. Having an open environment for these discussions where everyone feels comfortable contributing can really help to drive deeper discussion and discoveries and overall lead to a better solution for the potential product enhancements.
The AutoCAD Electrical team looks forward to hearing from you and to your participation in these events!
Jared Bunch
Product Designer
Autodesk, Inc.
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"User Post" to alter sort of "By Tag" BOM
April 7, 2008 03:06 PMby Nate HoltThis came up late last week. A European user was seeing his "By Tag" bill of materials report show up sorted in reverse order when the primary sort was set to be the "TAG" field. He was seeing BOM entry for "-91K" show up before the entry for "-51Q" or "-1X".
It appears that this report is first attempting to sort on the numeric suffix value of the field before it tries an alphanumeric evaluation. So the leading "dash" character common in IEC tagging mode was making the tag values look like negative numbers. The result is that sorting negative numbers from small (most negative) to large (least negative) would put "-91" before "-15" and "-1".
The work-around was to create a "User Post", launched from the "By Tag" BOM report display. This would "post-process" the report data, do an alphanumeric sort (instead of numeric sort) on the "Tag" field, and then re-display the report.
It only took one line of code added to the existing "user post" AutoLISP utility that ships with the product. This extra line makes a call into an AutoCAD Electrical API "sort" function. It sorts on the "(nth 16 ...)" element of each "By Tag" BOM entry - which corresponds to the "TAG" field.
(if (= user_2 "1")
(progn
(setq combined_data (c:wd_selsort combined_data '(lambda (X Y) (< (nth 16 X)(nth 16 Y)))))
) )The ACE2008 path/filename is c:\program files\autodesk\acade 2008\tag_bom.lsp - for other versions, hit the "User post" button with the report displayed and observe the full path/filename given in the command window).
To finish it off, the "Dialog" entry can be changed as well (same folder, file name tag_bom.dcl):
:toggle{key="user2";
label="Use alpha-sort on TAG column";
}That's it. Seems to work.
Download files here is you'd like this adjusted user post file.
files/21201_21300/21282/file_21282.lsp (rename tag_bom.lsp)
files/21201_21300/21283/file_21283.dcl (rename tag_bom.dcl)
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Extra Wire Number Display - AutoCAD Electrical
April 5, 2008 12:05 PMby Nate HoltAutoCAD Electrical assigns a single wire number tag-ID on a per network basis. If you want to display this wire number assignment multiple times at various points on the wire network, the tools are available.
But you might want certain electrical symbol connections to always show a copy of the connected wire number right at the point where the wire connects to the component. Again, the tools are there to add extra wire number copies that follow the main assigned wire number, but you have to manually position these.
What if you want to just insert the electrical symbol and have these "extra" wire numbers come in automatically. There is a way to do this: you can add a visible attribute to the electrical component symbol, position it near where the wire connects, and AutoCAD Electrical will automatically populate it with the connected wire's tag-ID assignment.
Here's how. Let's say you want your thermocouple symbol to always show the attached wire numbers - right at the symbol's wire connection points.
Open up the symbol in AutoCAD. Here is the "before" version of the symbol. Note the two wire connection attributes on the right-hand side, "X1TERM01" and "X1TERM02".
Add two new ATTDEFS. Make the tag names the same as the wire connection attribute name but with a leading "_" character. So, add ATTDEF _X1TERM01 and _X1TERM02 as shown below. Make sure that these attributes are NOT marked "Invisible".
Save your modified symbol. That should do it. Now, when you pop this modified symbol into a new or purged schematic (purged of any old versions of this symbol), and run the Auto Wire Numbers command, you should see the wire number assignment displayed at the wire connection points of every instance of this symbol.
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Tip: Terminal Strip Editor - speed-up
April 4, 2008 03:41 PMby Nate HoltTSEditor wants to always work with an up-to-date wire connection table in
the project scratch database. But if this gets in your way (you're working
on a big project and you know that the out-of-date drawing(s) have changes
that do not involve wire connections) you can manually launch TSEditor and
skip the time that it takes to do the table update.
Type this at command line:
ACE_TSE_RESTART [Enter]I believe this should work in ACE2007-2009