New Tools in AutoCAD® Electrical 2007

Autodesk AutoCAD® Electrical software is the industry’s leading application, built specifically to create and modify electrical controls designs. As part of the AutoCAD® family of products, Autodesk has just released its new 2007 version of AutoCAD® Electrical, adding more productivity and design tools, libraries and performance enhancements. Let’s take a look at some of these new features.

Connector Generator
Automatically generate a multipin connector on the fly with the new Insert Connector command. The user-configurable dialog box enables you to select number of pins, spacing, and orientation to quickly create block definitions in active drawing files without having to build or maintain a library of connector symbols.

Splices
Use the new Splice tool to create up to two wire-to-wire connections per side while maintaining connectivity throughout your drawing and project.

Bend Wires
Bend a wire into a right angle turn to avoid or add geometry using the new Bend Wire tool. When a wire is defined at a right angle, you can modify the wire and create a new right angle bend while maintaining the original wire connections to the components.

Multiple Wire Bus
With a single command you can configure a new multiple wire bus that automatically routes from an existing multicontact component, bus or in empty space. While you are defining the wires, temporary display graphics appear on your cursor to indicate the direction and number of wires that will be placed in the drawing file.

Wire Collision Avoidance
Instead of drawing each line segment between components on your point-to-point drawings, simply select the two connection points and let AutoCAD® Electrical do the rest. Using the existing Insert Wire command, select a connection point on each component and your wire is automatically routed, without running through your existing geometry.

Wire Number Placement
AutoCAD Electrical now supports the automatic placement of wire numbers above, below or directly in-line with the wire. You can set the wire number placement for all new wires inserted in a single drawing or for the entire project, without updating the placement of existing wire numbers.

Link to Autodesk Inventor
You can now communicate your electrical designs bidirectionally between AutoCAD Electrical and Autodesk Inventor® Professional. AutoCAD Electrical users can pass electrical intent information for cables and conductors to Autodesk Inventor Professional for the automated creation of a 3D harness design. And Autodesk Inventor Professional users can now pass wire connectivity information to AutoCAD Electrical for the automatic creation of the corresponding 2D schematics.

Multidiscipline Symbol Libraries
In addition to the comprehensive electrical symbol libraries, AutoCAD Electrical now includes symbol libraries for creating pneumatic, hydraulic, and P&ID drawings:

-Hydraulic Symbol Library: AutoCAD Electrical hydraulic symbol library includes filters, valves, cylinders, pressure switches, motors, pumps, meters, restrictors, quick disconnects, flow arrows and more, all adhering to NFPA/T3.10.4R1-1990 and AS1101.1-1993 standards.

-Pneumatic Symbol Library: AutoCAD Electrical pneumatic symbol library includes operators, valves, flow paths, filters, regulators, cylinders, meters, motors, quick disconnects, mufflers, manifolds, flow arrows and more.

-P&ID Symbol Library: AutoCAD Electrical P&ID symbol library includes equipment, tanks, nozzles, pumps fittings, valves, actuators, logic functions, instrumentation, flow and flow arrows, all strictly adhering to the ANSI/ISA’s S5.1 Instrumentation Standard.


Real-Time Error Checking
AutoCAD Electrical monitors and alerts users to potential design errors as they occur. Using the improved Electrical Audit tool, the application can identify and clean up problems that might affect an AutoCAD Electrical drawing. This tool displays a report of detected problems for the active project.

User-Defined Attributes
Add and define your own attributes for existing AutoCAD Electrical symbols. The newly defined metadata is easily customized and can be extracted for various reports. Use the new User Defined Attribute List tool to selectively determine which non–AutoCAD Electrical attributes are allowed in the AutoCAD Electrical report generators; otherwise only those attributes defined inside AutoCAD Electrical for each component category are processed in the project database and subsequent reports.

Table Style Cross-Referencing
The tabular cross-referencing styles now function at the same level as graphical and text styles, by creating customizable tables, updating drawings in real time and benefiting from increased flexibility in the way cross-referencing information is displayed.

Cross-Reference Updates
Cross-reference settings are now supported at the project, drawing and component level. Use the new Copy/Add Component Override tool to determine display settings for a specific component that are different from those of the drawing as a whole, or use the new Remove Component Override tool to remove component overrides, so the cross-referencing commands use the settings for the drawing.

Reports
New reporting functionality has been added to AutoCAD Electrical—further reducing the time required to manually generate and update reports while removing associated errors.

-Wire Label Report: Use the new wire label report to list wire and cable labels that exist in your drawing or project. The new, preformatted wire label report is ready for export and can be printed on any ASCII, Microsoft® Excel®, Access, CSV or XML-compatible wire label printer.

-Enhanced Audit Report: Use the Drawing Audit utility to clean up certain problems that might affect your design connectivity. The audit checks for wire gaps, bad wire numbers or colors, zero length wires and wire number floaters, and visually verifies all wires in your display.

Extensive Manufacturer’s Catalog Content
AutoCAD Electrical ships with a manufacturer’s catalog database that contains more than 45,000 components from the industry’s most popular vendors and to support the software’s worldwide user base, the catalog database now includes a greater number of Asia Pacific and European vendors.

New Project Command
Creating new projects and applying project properties is now easier using the New Project tool. In a single dialog box you can define the minimum requirements to create an AutoCAD Electrical project definition file (WDP), the folder in which the project will be maintained, and the settings and options defined within the project.

New Drawing Command
When you are faced with multiple customers or many one-off designs, the New Drawing tool helps reduce the hassle of configuring new drawings to specific standards. In a single dialog box you can apply a template and add drawing name, border, drawing type, and descriptions, which are then stored and available for future use.

Simplified Wire Type Selection
Managing wire properties from the Layer Manager is no longer necessary. During wire insertion, the current wire type displays at the command prompt. Now you can simply type in the hotkey “T” for immediate access to the Set Wire Type dialog box to quickly assign wire type.

Simplified Configuration Settings
Configuration settings have been condensed into a centralized Properties dialog box, where you can view and edit project settings, format styles, and select default drawing settings for the entire project or a single drawing.

If these new enhancements to AutoCAD® Electrical interest you, contact your Hagerman & Company sales representative for additional information.

 

this page last edited on Wednesday, September 17, 2008