custom ladder sizes

[Anonymous]

Hello,
I am new to Autocad Electrical. I am wondering if there is a way to set up custom sizes of ladders without having to manually change it everytime you insert a ladder? I don't mind the dialog box coming up but I would rather have the width default at 7 rather than 4.5. Is there a way to customize this?
thank you,
Tom

[Anonymous]

Hi Tom,

I think you can do this. The default settings are carried as attribute
values on an invisible block, "WD_M", that gets inserted into every AutoCAD
Electrical drawing (or comes in already inserted into your new drawing
template).

There are about 70 attributes on this block insert. But the attributes on
this block that you are interested in are these:

DLADW - default ladder width
RUNGDIST - default ladder rung spacing
RUNGHORV - default ladder orientation (values are "H" or "V")

So, how to change these values? That depends upon how you create new
drawings and add to AutoCAD Electrical. If you use a template that already
has this WD_M block inserted into it, then you need to open up that template
in AutoCAD. Type ATTMODE at command line and change value to 2. Type REGEN.
This should make all invisible attributes visible. Look down at the 0,0
point of your template. Hopefully you'll see a column of mysterious text
entities. This is probably the WD_M block's 70 or so attributes. Use DDATTE
to edit.

But, if you're not using a template to create new drawings, then you need to
modify the actual WD_M.dwg drawing and edit the attribute definitions. There
is a WD_M.dwg drawing in each of the symbol libraries supplied with AcadE.
Let's say you're using the "JIC125" library. Get into this folder (it's a
long path!) and open WD_M.dwg in AutoCAD. Use DDEDIT to edit the values on
the DLADW and RUNGDIST attribute definitions. Save. Now, when you create a
new drawing and the WD_M block goes in, hopefully it will have these new
ladder parameters as defaults.

Good luck,
Nate.


wrote in message news:5906040@discussion.autodesk.com...
Hello,
I am new to Autocad Electrical. I am wondering if there is a way to set up
custom sizes of ladders without having to manually change it everytime you
insert a ladder? I don't mind the dialog box coming up but I would rather
have the width default at 7 rather than 4.5. Is there a way to customize
this?
thank you,
Tom

[Anonymous]

Thanks Nate! It worked like a charm. Much appreciated.