I've puzzled over this for a while -
In a Wire or Cable From/To report, for the 20 wire attributes, and any user attributes, the report generator creates (2) copies. One set with a "1" or "_1" appended, and the other set with a "2" or "_2" appended. I assume that this is so information can be shown separately for each target.
For the wire attributes, any values you set in the wire layer manager show up in BOTH "1" & "2" attributes. User attributes don't seem to be populated even if filled in (Cable or Conduit markers)
I can find nothing in the "Help" files on this. What are they used for? And how do you add values to them?
See my attached spreadsheet "WIREFRM2.XLS" for an example of some of these puzzling attributes. (Highlighted in yellow)
Can someone explain these?
Thank you.
Do you have any one-line diagrams? I'm not positive, but I think the "_1" designation is referring to a one-line reference?
No. We don't do one-line drawings. Yet. It's the same suffix that shows on the target component info. (Tag, Inst, Loc, Pin, etc.) If the attribute ends in a letter, a "1" or "2" is appended. If it ends in a number, a "_1" or "_2" is appended.
One line symbols have a "1-" in the filename, and they are in a "1-" folder, but I think that's unrelated to the puzzle i'm wondering about.
Can you pass on the drawing to us for evaluating the details. You may please send us the drawing to mayuresh.athalekar@autodesk.com for investigation.
Hi Scott,
we discussed this based on your drawings post to us, Conduit markers are not used in a cable report at all, Conduit markers are expected to be used on a panel layout and they have theri own reports, you can go to menubar: Panel Layout -> Conduit Marker Tools -> Conduit Marker Report or Wire/Conduit Routing Report to generate reports.Conduit Marker does not support the User defined attributes and this has been logged as wish.
Do you want a combination between a conduit marker and a cable marker ?
We will log a wish for your issue.
Regards,
Kevin Li
Actually, what I am trying to understand is why wire user attributes, cable and conduit user attributes are doubled for each end of a wire or cable. I can't see the use, because I can't see how the information is populated. Where is is entered? Where is it pulled from?
Perhaps the attached screenshots will make it clearer. I'll have to split it. I can only attach three files. These two will show the cable and conduit user attributes from our default.wda file.
Scott
Here are the second two files that show the wire user1-20 attributes from the wire type data.
All four of these attachments are from a wire to-from report, but they also show on cable to-from reports.
Scott
Scott, it may sound a bit complicated but here goes. Wires have targets at both ends. When a wire leaves one drawing and continues on a different drawing, via signal arrows, it is sometimes possible that the wire type USER field data on one drawing doesn't match exactly on both drawings. For example, let's say you have specified a WHT_16AWG wire on drawing 4 and you used the USER1 field to enter THHN. But this wire happens to connect via a destination arrow to drawing 3, where the WHT_16AWG wire type has no data entry for USER1. In this case target 2, USER1_2 ,will display THHN but target 1, USER1_1, will contain no data in the report (see attached). This is due to the fact that the WHT_16AWG wire type on drawing 3 has no data entered into its USER1 field, while drawing 4 does.
Temporarily adding both USER1_1 and USER1_2 to a report will help you spot any areas where the wire on the source and destination end do not match up exactly. If all of your wire types contain the exact same USER1 entries on all drawings, you should see no difference between the data reported in USER1_1 and USER1_2 (see attached). Once this is the case, you could effectively remove USER1_2 from the Fields to Report list and just keep USER1_1. In my example, I would rename USER1 to INSULATION TYPE, and report this on the wire list, if I did not choose to add the USER1 data (%1) to the wire layer name format (i.e. %C_%S_%1).
Actually, Doug, that didn't seem too complicated at all. Pretty straight forward way to vet mistakes. Was it really designed that way? Kinda undocumented...
However, our user attributes for cable and conduit markers are duplicated the same way. Is this then by accident? Can I assume that they are meaningless and should be ignored? Or do they, too have a purpose?
Scott
Scott,
I'll jump in here although Doug is doing a good job of explaining things.
The attributes you mention, your cable and conduit marker attributes, I think are really attributes you've added in the User-Defined attributes list. User-Defined attributes are limited to adding data held on blocks that represent components. They can't be used for cable markers, wire number blocks, and conduit markers.
So, why are they showing up in your report? Well anytime you add a user-defined attribute the field is added to the report even if the components do not carry that attribute. In a from/to report each row represents a wire between 2 components, the "from" component and the "to" component. Since these components each carry the same attributes these reports differentiate between the 2 components in the same row by adding the "1" and "2" suffixes to the field labels. Same thing for the user-defined attributes, (since they are only supported on components), they are added to the report with the suffixes for the "from" and "to" components.
Awhile back I saw a user post that Nate Holt did that took the W##USER attributes on the wire number blocks and plugged them into the wire type USER#_# fields in the from/to reports. Since these fields are already confused between each other it is a little confusing but basically it repurposes some of these fields that are populated from the wire type user fields and replaces it with the data from the attributes on the wire number blocks (which are not available in reports).
This user post can still be found at - http://mfgcommunity.autodesk.com/blogs/blog/view/7/How_pull_the_10_%22user%22/
Hope this doesn't confuse things further.
Pat
Well - let's see. I guess I'm not so much confused as dismayed. The Report Generator interface is really awkward to follow, much less exploit. There's a lot of unexplained bits and pieces...
You are correct, Pat - I am referring to user-defined attributes added to the Cable and conduit markers. It's good to know the limitations of user attributes. Somehow that should be clearer in the documentation, or I just missed it.
Actually, user-defined attributes can be used for cable markers. When you run a cable summary, the user-defined attributes we added show up only once for the cable marker (and not as a "1" & "2" suffix deal). If you run a cable from-to report, the cable marker user-defined attributes show up once for the cable marker, AND twice more with the "1" & "2" suffixes for assumed use with components. I attach two jpg images which show the cable (and conduit) user-defined attributes in a cable from-to report.
I think I understand the wire user attribute swap script. It's similar to what we did with conduit attribute re-mapping.
So bottom line here is that any attribute in the Report Generator "Change Report Format" area that has a "1" or "2" suffix and is not associated with a regular component, is to be ignored. Does that pretty much cover it?
Scott,
Yes, I think you have a good understanding of it.
I will log an item to add more detail in the documentation regarding user-defined attributes.
Also, you could go in and update the documentation yourself on the wiki if you wanted. Here is one link to the user-defined attributes feature.
You can add comments or actually update the content.
Pat
Thanks for jumping in Pat. I've been tied up most of the day with other AutoCAD Electrical related work.
In a Wire or Cable From/To report, for the 20 wire attributes, I am getting all 20 attrbutes in from/to report; but all the columns seems to be empty (even after feeding data on wire attributes on both sheets).
Note that I am using AutoCAD Electrical 2013 version..
Thanks in advance for your support..