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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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Pre-positioning cross-ref annotation - AutoCAD Electrical
January 30, 2009 08:29 AMby Nate HoltThis issue came up about 30 minutes ago. Here is a brief outline of how AutoCAD Electrical determines the initial placement of an electrical component's cross-reference annotation.
The cross-reference position defaults to the location and text size of a specific attribute that is defined on the library symbol itself (for example, library symbol VCR1.dwg for a vertically inserted parent relay coil symbol). Wherever this attribute is located for a given instance of a symbol, that defines the XY position of where cross-reference Mtext or cross-reference table will initially insert. If the generated cross-reference text is then moved to a new location, it should "hold" at this position for any subsequent updates. It is only the initial insertion that is controlled by the key attribute's defined location.
Here is a list of candidate attributes, in the order that AutoCAD Electrical checks:
1st - WXREF
2nd - XREFNO
3rd - XREF
4th - XREFNC
5th - NO
6th - NCMost of the default parent library symbols have XREFNO, XREFNC attributes. So, most likely, the initial/default location where the cross-reference appears will be at the XY coordinate of the XREFNO attribute on the symbol. The default text size will follow the text size defined for that attribute.
If you want to permanently have cross-reference text come in “lower” that what is defined in the default libraries, then the task is to open each library symbol and MOVE the XREFNO (along with the other cross-ref attributes) attribute definitions down an appropriate distance. If you want to change the initial text size of the cross-reference text, change the default text height of the XREFNO attribute definition.
Attribute WXREF overrides all other attributes. Here is a quick test. Insert a relay coil on your drawing. Run the AutoCAD Electrical “Add Attribute” command. Pick on this inserted coil symbol instance. In the dialog, enter this:
... and then pick a point somewhere below the symbol.
Now insert a relay contact and "parent/sibling" to this coil. You should see the cross-reference pop in at the exact position of the WXREF attribute you added to the symbol. Its text size should also follow the text height you defined for this attribute. This is because WXREF is the first in the search list above. So ACE ignores the symbol's XREFNO location and just goes for the WXREF attribute's location and text size.