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Red line drawings vs designing on the fly

2 REPLIES 2
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Message 1 of 3
Anonymous
532 Views, 2 Replies

Red line drawings vs designing on the fly

I am new to ABS2004 and after completeing the tutorials and reading the
concepts guide cover to cover, I have come to the conclusion that it is very
adventageous and important to design the electrical drawings and circuiting
(red lining on paper) prior to starting the CAD drawings.

Am I correct in this observation?

We design " on the fly" so to speak. We design on the screen as we go. We
will start laying out MEP items in design development drawings before the
floor plans are completed and usually have all of the lighting, receptacles,
ceiling diffusers, ductwork, plumbing fixtures, etc... located on the
drawings before we ever size or assign any circuits, panels, piping sizes,
or select any lighting fixture types or manufacturers. We then continually
revise and update our design development drawings into our final
construction drawings.

Rarely do we sketch out the piping, circuting, or ductwork on paper before
drawing it in its final form. We almost never select final equipment
selections Units, Chillers, Pumps, Switchboards, Transformers, until the
last few weeks of the project.

It appears to me that too much intial setup and defining of systems and
equipment is required early-on in the project and that the later you wait to
define these things, the more complicated it is to accomplish it. (an
example is circuiting using wiring)

I would be interested in hearing from other designers as to how flexible and
user friendly they find this package to be and any insight as to how to
establish a decent flow to the design process.

Mike Abernethy
2 REPLIES 2
Message 2 of 3
Anonymous
in reply to: Anonymous

Mike,

You could not have worded it better.

I completely agree with you.

... A frustrated user.


"Mike Abernethy" wrote in message
news:BF03814F5B55EC6D56A4021C5F398B9C@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> I am new to ABS2004 and after completeing the tutorials and reading the
> concepts guide cover to cover, I have come to the conclusion that it is
very
> adventageous and important to design the electrical drawings and
circuiting
> (red lining on paper) prior to starting the CAD drawings.
>
> Am I correct in this observation?
>
> We design " on the fly" so to speak. We design on the screen as we go. We
> will start laying out MEP items in design development drawings before the
> floor plans are completed and usually have all of the lighting,
receptacles,
> ceiling diffusers, ductwork, plumbing fixtures, etc... located on the
> drawings before we ever size or assign any circuits, panels, piping sizes,
> or select any lighting fixture types or manufacturers. We then continually
> revise and update our design development drawings into our final
> construction drawings.
>
> Rarely do we sketch out the piping, circuting, or ductwork on paper before
> drawing it in its final form. We almost never select final equipment
> selections Units, Chillers, Pumps, Switchboards, Transformers, until the
> last few weeks of the project.
>
> It appears to me that too much intial setup and defining of systems and
> equipment is required early-on in the project and that the later you wait
to
> define these things, the more complicated it is to accomplish it. (an
> example is circuiting using wiring)
>
> I would be interested in hearing from other designers as to how flexible
and
> user friendly they find this package to be and any insight as to how to
> establish a decent flow to the design process.
>
> Mike Abernethy
>
>
Message 3 of 3
Anonymous
in reply to: Anonymous

Hi Mike -

I'll disagree with some of this

I'm not going to try and address everything that you mention in your post,
but let's take a few minutes to address the circuit issue that you mention.

When you first start really working with ABS electrically what's the first
thing that you do? Probably layout the devices (and please let me know if
I'm wrong).

The list of items that I must specify for a Power & Lighting type device are

System (to control layer)
Elevation
Justification (just leave it alone and it will behave just like it was a
"block")
ID
Insert Tag (Defaults to so nothing is required)
Rotation
Connector System (Defaults to )
Number of Poles (Defaults to )
Voltage (Defaults to )
Circuit (Defaults to )
Load (Defaults to 0)
Demand Factor (Defaults to )

You don't have to specify a voltage, phase, load or demand factor for the
connectors. Leave them all ByCircuit if you want and they will connect to
any circuit. If on the other hand, you are laying out 20A duplex
receptacles, you can set them so that their voltage is 120V and the Number
of Poles is one, so that when you start circuiting them later, the list of
available circuits is limited for you and you don't accidentally have them
connected to a 480V circuit. You can also specify them all to have a load of
180VA if you wish, so you don't have to manually calculate the loads later.

You do need to select a system for the device (but not the connector), but
the system on the device is really only used for layering, which is
something that you need to specify "traditionally" as well.

The deviceadd jig also asks for an elevations, which is something that you
generally know, although traditionally you haven't "specified" it as
everything was a block at an elevation of 0. If you like, you can leave
everything at 0. Some of the calculations of distance may be incorrect if
you leave the elevation at 0, but that is completely up to the user.

You can also specify an ID for the devices, which you may or may not know
(and this is "generally" used more for lighting fixtures), but if you
previously used block attributes for light fixture types, this had to be
specified at time of insertion as well.

You have to specify a rotation, just like if you were using a block.

Wiring: You are not required to know circuit numbers or panel names to do
wiring. Leave the Show Circuits from Panel set to and the Circuit set
to . You can wire you receptacles, or lights or whatever. You
don't have to have the circuit selected, or panel sized. You can also add
your homerun tags if you want. They'll just display as a "-" until some
valid circuit and panel data is entered.

Now you can count homeruns to determine how many panels you need, and insert
the panels. The panel size is simply a property of the panel, and doesn't
control anything about how the circuits work. You can add as many circuits
as you want to any panel you want, so the size of the panel is completely up
to you and it can be modified whenever you want to modify it. Add you
panels, and set them to automatically create circuits, or go back and create
your circuit manually if you want. It's completely up to you when you want
to create circuit. You don't have to plan out how many circuit to create and
create them all at once. You can always add or remove circuits from a panel,
or move them between two panels using circuit manager.

Now that your circuit are created, you can assign the circuits to the
devices. As this assignment occurs your home run tags are updated to show
the connections that you have made. There could be some easier ways created
for you to select all of the devices on a wiring run than exist today, and
we hope that in the future there will be some better methods for updating
all of the devices connected to a wiring run, but that doesn't make it
impossible to do today. There is a "trade-off" in doing it this way vs. the
traditional method of simply updating the home run "tag". Traditionally, you
were responsible for keeping track of what circuit each device was connected
to, usually via the panel schedules. Now the device keeps track of what
their circuits are, but you have to tell them, and the panel schedule is the
result of this.

I'm very interested in hearing back from all of you telling me where we have
assumed the workflow above incorrectly, or what problems you may have with
that workflow.

jason

"Mike Abernethy" wrote in message
news:BF03814F5B55EC6D56A4021C5F398B9C@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> I am new to ABS2004 and after completeing the tutorials and reading the
> concepts guide cover to cover, I have come to the conclusion that it is
very
> adventageous and important to design the electrical drawings and
circuiting
> (red lining on paper) prior to starting the CAD drawings.
>
> Am I correct in this observation?
>
> We design " on the fly" so to speak. We design on the screen as we go. We
> will start laying out MEP items in design development drawings before the
> floor plans are completed and usually have all of the lighting,
receptacles,
> ceiling diffusers, ductwork, plumbing fixtures, etc... located on the
> drawings before we ever size or assign any circuits, panels, piping sizes,
> or select any lighting fixture types or manufacturers. We then continually
> revise and update our design development drawings into our final
> construction drawings.
>
> Rarely do we sketch out the piping, circuting, or ductwork on paper before
> drawing it in its final form. We almost never select final equipment
> selections Units, Chillers, Pumps, Switchboards, Transformers, until the
> last few weeks of the project.
>
> It appears to me that too much intial setup and defining of systems and
> equipment is required early-on in the project and that the later you wait
to
> define these things, the more complicated it is to accomplish it. (an
> example is circuiting using wiring)
>
> I would be interested in hearing from other designers as to how flexible
and
> user friendly they find this package to be and any insight as to how to
> establish a decent flow to the design process.
>
> Mike Abernethy
>
>

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