A Question about large devices - More than 99 pins

[drathak]

I just noticed the sentence below in the new knowledgebase (was probably always there) regarding how to number X?TERM## attributes if needing more than 99 pins.

"If more than 99 terminals are present on a single symbol, the "n" value can continue with double alpha letters/numbers such as "A0," "A1," "AZ," "B0" and so on."

Not having seen or heard that before, i have some IED's with pins that number into the 120's.  So far that has not been a problem, but I wanted to make sure there was no real restriction on doing it the way suggested.  Going to three digits seems much more logical to me than switching to analphanumeric system.

[jalger]

Hi Drathak,

Its been there awhile.

The issue you will come across (depending on the version of the product) is during an export to spreadsheet.

It will only push up to pin 99, everything after that magically disappears.  

Actually I think the databse just doesn't know what to do with the 3rd character.

The A0 - Z9 pins did not export a while ago, I haven't tried in 2015 to see if that works.

Other then the export issue, everything else seems to work as intended. (I.e. it links to the Pin database, pins beyond 99 show in the editor, etc) 

In all honesty they probably never thouight anyone would create a device what such a large number of pins.

Regards,

James

[dougmcalexander]

James is right! The software expects ertain data to be contained in a specific location.  For example, the name of a symbol file must contain H or V as the first character, then two letters to define which Catalog Table it searches during Lookup, then number 1 or 2 to indicate parent or child.  The numbering for Pins may fall into the same required syntax.  It might see 120 as 12.  Autodesk will have to comment if there is a problem or not with not using their 2-character alpha-numberic method.  I have never gone above 99 wire connections on a symbol, so I don't know.  Usually before I get to 99 I have split off a child.  But like James said, the Export to Spreadsheet doesn't expect 100, 101, etc.

My advice would be to follow the directions from Autodesk.

[drathak]

Thanks for all the feedback.  I should have been more clear, I have no schematic symbols with more than a handful of pins.  The high number of pins are on the wiring symbols.  It is the TERM##, TERMDESC## and WIRENO## attributes I was thinking of.  My bad.

There doesn't appear to be such a restriction implied here, other than this statement in the KB;

    "Each wire connection attribute definition is tied to a terminal attribute definition (TERMxx) by the matching two digit suffix on each attribute tag pair."

So far I have had no errors wirth doing this.  Just checked and being on the wiring diagrams, there is nothing that gets exported that these numbers seem to affect.  So I think I'm good.  Here is one of the blocks, just as an example of what I've done.

[jalger · Accepted solution]

Yeah if your not exporting I don't think you will have an issue.

I helped several clients develope Circuit board Pinouts with 150 terminals. (they were exporting to manage the Pins in excel)

Aside from the Exporting issue the circuit board worked perfectly.

let us know if you encounter anything.

Regards,

James