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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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Dumb Graphics converted to smart AutoCAD Electrical Drawings
September 11, 2008 11:07 PMby Nate HoltThis came up last week. A user has some old schematics created with AutoCAD - just lines, circles and text - no blocks, no attributes. The challenge was to make it semi-smart in the AutoCAD Electrical world without altering the appearance of the old drawing (i.e. cannot redraw it from "scratch" with AutoCAD Electrical).
Here's an small example of what such a drawing might look like:
Lines, text entities, and circles. That's it. No blocks/attributes here in this example!
So, how can we add some intelligence to this so that AutoCAD Electrical can process it to some extent?
Preliminaries - Turn on the Conversion Tools toolbar
To get to this toolbar, select the 'Projects' pull-down menu and follow this sequence:
Simplest Conversion - Component tags recognized by AutoCAD Electrical
This is the minimum and the easiest to do. This will allow picked component tag text entities to be converted to simple blocks/attributes that will then be recognizable to ACE. Pick on the 4th toolbar button - "Tag Schematic Component".
Now just pick on all the PARENT component tag text entities. Here we've picked six parents in our sample dumb AutoCAD schematic:
... and just hit [Enter]. The six text entities are each replaced with a generic AutoCAD Electrical-aware block with a visible TAG1 attribute.
There is a second tool to deal with 'child' symbol text conversion. Pick on this toolbar button labeled 'Tag Child' :
... and repeat the above process for text entities that relate to child contacts.
At this point you have established links between parent and child tags. You can right click on parent text entity and get the normal AutoCAD Electrical Insert/Edit dialog. Here is a right-click on the "1TR" text:
... and you can make a catalog assignment and have this stuff show up in the BOM reports.
But there looks like there is description text for each parent component. How can we convert this text entity to an attribute and then tie it in to the component tag? ...
Next Step - Linking Description Text Entities
Pick on the 5th toolbar button - 'Link Descriptions'.
This is a little tricky, but once you get used to the sequence, it will go quickly. Repeated sequence is 1) pick on the component tag, 2) right-click, 3) pick on the description text to link (up to three text entities allowed), 4) right-click to execute, go back to step 1 to move to next component. As each DESC1 added to the picked tag-ID text, it will change color and draw a temp graphics line back to the tag that the text is now tied to.
Here we've done the first two and are in the process of converting the third one:
Type REGEN to make the temp graphics go away.
Now, if we right click on '1TR', the Insert/Edit dialog pops up and shows that our converted text entity is now part of the block (attribute DESC1)!
Third Step - Linking Pin Text / Adding Wire Connections
You can keep going with this conversion. It is possible to link floating text entities representing component connection pin numbers in to the smart tag attribute. In the example above, '1TR' has pin text 7 and 2 floating near the wire connections. This can be converted to smart 'TERMxx' attributes and become part of the '1TR' symbol and show up in various connection reports.
To do the above, pick on this toolbar button - fifth button over - flyout - next to last button labeled 'Add Wire Connections':
The sequence is 1) pick on component tag, 2) pick on end of wire that ties to one side of component (use END osnap)
then 3) pick on the '7' text entity which is to be the pin number that goes with this wire connection point (if no text then just click past). The link is established and a temp graphic line shows that the pin text is linked to the main tag-ID block/attribute.
4) repeat from step 2 for the other wire connection(s). Type REGEN to remove the temp graphics. Note that both pin text entities are now a different color assignment (on a new layer).
Now, if right-click on this component then these pin numbers now show up in the Insert/Edit dialog:
... and if you flip the line entities to be on a "wire layer", then you should now see this component show up in various wire from/to reports ( ! ).
Pushing to the Final Level - Adding the rest of the symbol's geometry
But, you can't SCOOT this component very well. The main circle, small circles, and two connecting segments between the three circles are still just dumb AutoCAD entities. Can these entities be added to the block? Yes.
Pick on the 'Add Geometry' toolbar button shown on this fly-out:
... pick on the tag-ID attribute and then pick on the geometry to add to this block. Now the converted symbol should 'scoot'.
Conclusion
It's not pretty, not easy, but it can be done.