terminals and terminal editer

[Anonymous]

I am having trouble with terminals in a ladder style schematic. If I place terminals in on the power rail side, autocad thinks the power rail is a wire in realality it is a jumper on my terminals. Aso i need to place one on each rung which than gives me two many terminals and wire connections for my project.
The way I see it there needs to be a way to edit the wires in the terminal strip editor and a way to show duplicated terminals in the schematics without affecting the terminal strip in the layout.
all I can due now is place a dumb symble in the schematic on the power rails and add spares in the termial strip editer to make it right but lose some of the wire connections on the panel layout.

[dougmcalexander]

Go to www.ecadconsultant.com and click on Tips/Tricks from the site menu at the top. Look in the "How To" index for the one entitled "Using AutoCAD Electrical® to create a power bus from terminal blocks." Perhaps this will help.

[Anonymous]

I understand the use of the "Jumper wire" wish I new that sooner thank you!!
How do I adress the multible terminals that would be dupilcated? Is it correct to show the componest dasiy chained or like a secound power rail from the terminal to the componest on other rungs? (exsample all the door mounted switches and buttons ref one terminal insted of showing a term for each one) or is there a way to show more schematic terminals then there is foot print terminals??

[dougmcalexander]

I suggest only inserting one terminal symbol in the schematic per terminal symbol in the panel layout. In the example I posted the Jumper-Bar represents the connection in the middle of the block. There are two RED #14 wires connecting to the terminal as well. The angled wire symbol depicts this. (see attached image). If I need to connect from the same terminal to a circuit on another page, I use a source arrow and connect it to one of the RED #14 wires. I insert the destination arrow on the other page.

If you have your terminal block properties set to only allow 4 connections per block, and you connect a 5th wire to the block, once you get to TSE to prepare for inserting the graphical strip, AcadE will automatically add an additional block to accommodate the 5th wire. For example, if you use the HT0W02 style block that is marked with the wire number of the node, and you have its block properties set for 4 wires max, connecting a 5th wire will force TSE to insert an additional block. This is normal, because TSE is trying to adjust the terminal strip to accommodate all of the wires you wish to connect to the strip. This is okay because all terminals in the strip get the wire number. But if using HT0002 where each terminal is marked in sequence, you could end up with two terminals marked as TB4:3, the original one from the schematic, and the extra that TSE adds in the graphical strip.

The bottom line is a term I have coined as “Design Reality.” Design your schematic in such as way as to mimic the real world. AutoCAD Electrical’s original name was Toolbox/WD, then it was called VIA/WD. The WD stands for “Wiring Diagram.” The program was born from the need for an intelligent way to depict wiring diagrams. It is very well suited to allow us to create both a schematic and wiring diagram all in one. If it were plain AutoCAD you could get away with murder, like the old days, but you would have no intelligent link to the panel footprints either, and no bi-directional updates, and no automatic BOM reports, and wire lists. If you only want one occurrence of TB4 terminal 4 in the panel, then only insert one instance of it in the schematic.

[Anonymous]

Doug,

Sorry to bring this thread back to life, but it shows exactly what I'm dealing with and I don't think that the solution you proposed would work nice in my case (most of the time).

In the example that you showed, you are right, using two wires connected to the same terminal makes perfect sense. If you'd have one of the components on a different drawing, putting a source/destination would work nice too. However, this is where my problems begin. You can do it once in a while, but not all the time.

If I have 20 terminals, all 24VDC, and I have 20 components connected to them inside the panel and then 20 components in the field, I would have a ton of arrows (source/destination) if I want to show the field wiring on a different page. This could potentially make things very confusing for the electrician, jumping through pages.

One more example would be a PLC output card that turns on 16 lights in the field. On one side of the light you have a wire that comes from the output, on the other side you have the 24V COM. Being that on a different page you used the 16 24V COM terminals for "in the panel" connections, you would end up with 16 source/destination arrows, all carrying the same voltage, which would make my boss and customer say "that makes the drawing too complicated and busy". 🙂

I read my post and it sounds as if I'm upset. 🙂 I'm not, I just wish I'd find a way to make this work that we need it to. I really appreciate all the help that you are providing on this forum and I hope you can point out a new solution for me regarding this "issue".

Thank you very much.

Cristian

[Anonymous]

ACADE needs to be able to split the two sides of a terminal apart while
being still connected to allow dwgs to do this. Possibly like the
Parent/Child arrangement.

One question, do your field components have terminals to allow the wiring to
be changed between the field component and the main panel? If so, use those
terminals in the field wiring diagram and have a Fan In/Out at each end with
only the one Source/Destination arrow required. In your second example, you
didn't say if the light are all in one field panel or not. If they are, you
would only have 1 source/destination arrow for all of them. If they are in
multiple locations, You could have 1 source destination arrow for each light
rather than each wire.

Regards Brad

wrote in message news:6299797@discussion.autodesk.com...
Doug,

Sorry to bring this thread back to life, but it shows exactly what I'm
dealing with and I don't think that the solution you proposed would work
nice in my case (most of the time).

In the example that you showed, you are right, using two wires connected to
the same terminal makes perfect sense. If you'd have one of the components
on a different drawing, putting a source/destination would work nice too.
However, this is where my problems begin. You can do it once in a while, but
not all the time.

If I have 20 terminals, all 24VDC, and I have 20 components connected to
them inside the panel and then 20 components in the field, I would have a
ton of arrows (source/destination) if I want to show the field wiring on a
different page. This could potentially make things very confusing for the
electrician, jumping through pages.

One more example would be a PLC output card that turns on 16 lights in the
field. On one side of the light you have a wire that comes from the output,
on the other side you have the 24V COM. Being that on a different page you
used the 16 24V COM terminals for "in the panel" connections, you would end
up with 16 source/destination arrows, all carrying the same voltage, which
would make my boss and customer say "that makes the drawing too complicated
and busy". 🙂

I read my post and it sounds as if I'm upset. 🙂 I'm not, I just wish I'd
find a way to make this work that we need it to. I really appreciate all the
help that you are providing on this forum and I hope you can point out a new
solution for me regarding this "issue".

Thank you very much.

Cristian

[John]

[quote:title=dougmcalexander wrote:]
Design your schematic in such as way as to mimic the real world.[/quote]

This may be the way ACE was designed (or its predecessors). IMHO The whole point of a schematic is that should not mimic the physical real world. That is the job of a wiring diagram. The schematic is there to show how it works electrically.

A classic example of this used to be the circuit diagram that you used to get with in car handbooks that had to show all the lights and the engine, etc. in their relative positions. This resulted in multiple parallel "railway tracks" of lines that were impossible to follow. I still see diagrams drawn like this today.

Although the TSE editor and jumpers are a real advance, the limitation of only being able to have one schematic representation of a terminal that may have a number of connections in different parts of a design is a real problem that I hope will be solved in future editions of ACE.

This limitation results in me using far more jumpered rail terminals than I need, just to limit the number of to-from arrows and keep my schematic readable.

BTW This is not a criticism of you, Doug, without whos help I would not have been able to be productive in ACE at all!.

Thanks

John

[Anonymous]

Brad,

Thanks for the reply. We usually don't change the wire number for the field components (the terminal that we use is not the "change wire number" kind).

For the second example, I was thinking lights in different locations. I'm not sure I fully understand what you're saying by "1 source destination arrow for each light rather than each wire". Each light is on a separate wire, so having a source/destination arrow for each light would mean one arrow for each wire. Maybe I misunderstood you.

What you said in the beginning of your reply is exactly what I was thinking, an added attribute for the terminals would possibly allow users to link them and make them act as one.

Thanks again for the reply!

Cristian

[Anonymous]

You would have two wires going to each light at a minimum. The power and the
return. This means two terminals and two source and destination arrows. As I
stated, using the Fan In/Out command would cut the number of
Source/Destination arrows in half and would make for a slightly neater dwg.

With the terminals for the field wiring, I didn't mean changing the wire
number. I actually meant physical terminals at both ends so that new wire
could be placed into the actual physical circuit in case of damage to the
cable (like the conduit being dug up or crushed by something heavy).

When I design any field wiring to remote displays or remote controls, I
always have terminals at both ends of the cable run just for this sort of
scenario. Nothing is worse than having to undo looms to replace half a dozen
wires in a display panel due to a long cable run being replaced. For a
single light in a box or on a pole, I can see not needing terminals but they
would help prevent damage to the more expensive fitting in case of sudden
tension on the cable run.

Regards Brad


wrote in message news:6300359@discussion.autodesk.com...
Brad,

Thanks for the reply. We usually don't change the wire number for the field
components (the terminal that we use is not the "change wire number" kind).

For the second example, I was thinking lights in different locations. I'm
not sure I fully understand what you're saying by "1 source destination
arrow for each light rather than each wire". Each light is on a separate
wire, so having a source/destination arrow for each light would mean one
arrow for each wire. Maybe I misunderstood you.

What you said in the beginning of your reply is exactly what I was thinking,
an added attribute for the terminals would possibly allow users to link them
and make them act as one.

Thanks again for the reply!

Cristian

[Anonymous]

In reference to John's comment real world wiring in a simple schematic dose not work all the time. I agree! To reinforce this issue please look at my attachment. Note the magenta wire is my jumper. Any body have a solution that doesn't involve more terminals???
What makes this so bad is the control relays have a jumper system built in, my motor starters are daisy chained and the terminals can have 2 wires on the panel side and two wires coming in form outside devices as shown. My outputs on the PLC are dictated by the breakers feeding them for the group of devices. so moving the control relays and motor starter are out of the question. So I am left with do I need the wire to and from reports and the terminal editor to work? or do I want the schematic to look simple?

I wish Auto cad could come up with a way to edit the wires in the terminal editor beteewn same terminals groups. In real life when there are 3 jumpered double stack terminals it does not matter were the wire is put, it is all the same. it should only care if i have enough terminals for the amount wires. it would also be nice if we could use child terminals it is not nice to show 4 wires on a ladder power wire terminal there is very little room and as cheap as termininals are i do not want to use 50% more just to make it work. they take up realastate!

[Anonymous]

Brad,

I think I understand what you're saying, but I don't know if you fully understand what I am trying to describe. Since I had a couple of minutes to spare, I put a drawing together that would somewhat explain my scenario. Here is a screenshot of it.

I hope you are having a great Holiday Season!

Cristian