-
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.
-
Extra Wire Number Display - AutoCAD Electrical
April 5, 2008, 12:05 PM 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.
You must be logged in to post a comment.