New to Electrical

[MadMage863]

Alright, so I took a class on electrical just a week back but I'm still fumbling with a few procedures.

First, I'm trying to get a wire color and guage lable ON my wires - and not those crappy ones that you have to fill in yourself, I have too many wires for that - but all I can find is the lable on a leader, which looks plain retarded.

And my other problem is with terminal blocks. I'm trying to do a triple-level terminal strip and I've got it down right up to putting the graphic on the drawing. I need the image to show the number designations I've given the individual terminals, not the friggin wire numbers that go into them - and why is it that whoever designed these blocks couldn't design a spot for the lables that makes a bit more sense?

[dougmcalexander]

You can modify the terminals and position the text anywhere you wish. Those
footprints are supplied from the manufacturers and are just a starting
point. Most of us tweak to our satisfaction. I have attached a triple deck
block from the Entrelec folder that I modified. I added a second TERM
attribute for each level and moved them to the ends, like the real ones. I
assigned a different color to the TERM and WIRENOR and WIRENOL attributes so
you know which wire number goes to which level of the block when viewing in
color.

Just use the attached block as a pattern to build your own or modify the
ones you are using now. If you used the correct schematic terminal symbols
(the ones with a 1 in the middle) you will get the individual terminal
number in the graphical terminal strip. The wire number appears where the
WIRENOL and WIRENOR attributes are located.

As for wire color gauge labels, once you flyout the wire leaders icon to the
second icon you are looking at the wire color gauge labels menu. You can
select to Auto-insert, which automatically uses a leader. You can
alternatively choose a manual insert with leader, or manual insert without
leader. The only choice that allows you to window select wires is the Auto.
With Auto you can window select and all labels are inserted at once,
assuming you have a .WDW file loaded with the label names. Read on to learn
about the WDW file.

The manual insertions require you to pick the location on each wire where
you want the label to appear. The program cannot guess what we are thinking
when we want to do it manually. But in auto mode it will usually select a
mid-point that has enough room for the label.

You should never have to fill in the wire color/gauge label information more
than once. There is a file called default.wdw (wiring diagram wires) in the
User folder that collects the alternate names you prefer if you don't want
to display the layer name as the color gauge label. The one that ships with
AcadE is a sample. You can edit with notepad or WordPad and delete the
sample entries if you wish, or you can follow the syntax and replace them
with your own. The sample default.wdw shows the syntax. It is:

WIRE LAYER;WIRE LABEL NAME or for example: BLK_14AWG_MTW;BLK #14

If you just want to let AcadE build the file for you just enter as you go.
So, for example, BLK_14AWG_MTW is your layer name, but you want the label to
read as BLK #14. When the prompt appears after you insert a label, replace
the layer name with BLK #14. The next time you insert a label for a
BLK_14AWG_MTW wire AcadE will use the alternate name from the WDW file and
will not prompt for an alternate name.

If your wire types can vary from job to job, I suggest copying the
default.wdw to the project folder. Rename it to the projectname.wdw. You
can also create this file from scratch by simply right-clicking in the
project folder and creating a new text document. Name it projectname.wdw.
Each time you insert a wire color gauge label AcadE will prompt for an
alternate name. If for example BLK_14AWG_MTW is your layer name, but you
want the label to simply read as BLK #14, replace the layer name with BLK
#14. The next time you insert a label for a BLK_14AWG_MTW wire AcadE will
use the alternate name from the WDW file. Note: When you copy a project
with the Copy Project feature, it will automatically copy the WDW file, so
you never create it again, unless you are using different wires. Hint: You
can create the WDW file ahead of time as well. The sample default.wdw shows
the syntax. It is:

WIRE LAYER;WIRE LABEL NAME OR
BLK_14AWG_MTW;BLK #14

Note: When you copy a project with the Copy Project feature, AcadE will
automatically copy the WDW file. But if all of your projects use the same
wires, just leave it in the user folder with the name default.wdw.

wrote in message news:5943096@discussion.autodesk.com...
Alright, so I took a class on electrical just a week back but I'm still
fumbling with a few procedures.

First, I'm trying to get a wire color and guage lable ON my wires - and not
those crappy ones that you have to fill in yourself, I have too many wires
for that - but all I can find is the lable on a leader, which looks plain
retarded.

And my other problem is with terminal blocks. I'm trying to do a
triple-level terminal strip and I've got it down right up to putting the
graphic on the drawing. I need the image to show the number designations
I've given the individual terminals, not the friggin wire numbers that go
into them - and why is it that whoever designed these blocks couldn't design
a spot for the lables that makes a bit more sense?