Every year, I hope Autodesk makes some great strides in improving the Electrical portion of MEP, and every year, I find myself disappointed. The biggest improvement came in I think 2010, where conduit size was actual O.D. since then, it appears that nothing major has been improved. I don't want to go into details since there is a "wishlist," but features I'd like to see with more flexibility include:
- Advanced Wires. For example, whatever happened to switch legs? And Travelers? Also, do I work for the only electrical contractor that separates wire ticks into separate networks (ie you can't exceed 3 hots for a single neutral when wiring a basic power home run. If we have 6 hots and 2 neutrals, we Separate them as H-N-N-N-H-N-N-N). Also, as a company standard we have the Grounds at the "tail" end of the run, meaning in the order of hots, neutrals, and ground, the ground is farthest from the direction of the panel, whlie the hot is the "head" end. Because of this, we sometimes have conduit that shares circuits where the current moves in opposite direction. This results in combinatinos like H-H-N-G-N-H. Does anyone else out there use a similar standard.
Okay I said I wasn't going to go into detail, but I can see I already am, so I'll stop there. Regardless, am I the only one that thinks the Electrical content of MEP could be improved A LOT. Is it because there's so many conditions to account for it's a challenge for Autodesk? I personally find that hard to believe with the brainpower they have. It almost appears that what they need is someone with years of experience in electrical construction, or a team of members, to help guide the programmers in what the electrical content should have.
