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Processing Multiple Sub-Projects - AutoCAD Electrical
November 11, 2008, 01:43 PM Nate HoltPerformance takes a hit when an AutoCAD Electrical project gets very large. Here's a way to split a project into more manageable sub-projects while still allowing ability to do overall project cross-referencing and reporting functions.
Let's say you have an electrical design project consisting of three manufacturing cells. Each cell could pretty much be its own "project". But there is a small amount of interconnection between the cells. And there is a need for overall cross-referencing and full BOM reporting over the whole project. For the most part, each manufacturing cell will be worked on by its own team using AutoCAD Electrical.
Instead of having a single project of a thousand drawings, it would be nice to split this into three smaller sub-projects that can be worked on independently. Then, when necessary, be able to process all three sub-projects as a single project.
There is a work-around to accomplish this. Here's how.
1. Create all three sub-project files (the ".wdp" ascii text files) in a common folder.
2. Create a new fourth project in this common folder. This extra project will be the overall "super" project and will list ALL of the drawings that are listed in the three sub-projects.
3. Work in a sub-project. But when need to do an overall "super-project-wide" operation, temporarily make the "super" project the active project. Do the project-wide operation(s). Then flip your original sub-project to be the "active" project again.
Simple Example
We'll just use three small sub-projects containing 10 or fewer drawings each to illustrate how this might work.
Setup
We create an overall folder for our project, "PROJ-07". In this folder we create three sub-projects, "PROJ-07-CELL01" through "PROJ-07-CELL03". Each sub-project's drawings are stored in a separate subfolder (not required but necessary if drawing names are going to be repeated!).
We create an overall "super" project, "PROJ-07-ALL" as well. It does not have any unique drawings in it. It just references all of the drawings already referenced in all three of the sub-projects.
Here are the drawings in PROJ-07-CELL01:
... and here are the drawings in the sub-projects for CELL02 and CELL03:
Now, with all four projects set up (three sub-projects and the one "super" project), we list all four in the AutoCAD Electrical Project Manager window:
Here is what it looks like with all four projects "expanded" to show their drawings:
In Operation
Let's say you've been assigned to work on CELL02 and you're currently working on drawing 004.dwg in the CELL02 project. You suddenly have the need to insert an interlock relay contact and cross-reference it... but it is tied to a relay coil that is somewhere in one of the other two sub-projects.
Just temporarily flip the active project to the overall "super" project...
... and do your project-wide operations. Then flip back to the CELL02 project as the "active" project.
That's it.
Creating the overall "super" project is probably the most tedious part of this whole work-around. You need to include each sub-project's drawing list. But there is a quick way to do it...
1. Set up your sub-projects with their drawings listed.2. Create an empty overall super project.3. Open this overall project's ".wdp" file with an ASCII text editor like wordpad.exe. Scroll to the end of the file.4. Open each of the sub-project ".wdp" files with an ASCII text editor. Cut and paste the list of drawings found in the bottom section of each of these ".wdp" files into the bottom of the overall project wdp file.5. Save the modified overall project ".wdp" file. That's it. It should work.
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