My Friend, I started working for a German company in 1988. We used ELCAD until switching to the original Unix/MSDOS Promis-e in 1991. I have been designing to IEC standards/the standards to achieve the GS and CE ratings since before they were required in the USA. Promis-e got the job done but the learning curve was steep and the "work-arounds" were numerous. Things as simple as the angled wire were nearly impossible to achieve and get the wires to show up on the wire list with the correct wiring sequence. I had to create 11 different angled wire symbols to get by. Promis-e "promised" me that the problem would be solved by September 15th the year we purchased the program, 1991. It still was not corrected in 1997 when I switched to the program now known as AutoCAD Electrical. Promis-e was eventually "manipulated" to run inside AutoCAD's space, but it was not a true AutoCAD application. It was one program running inside another. I called it a "parasitic" application. We still decided to purchase two copies of Promis-e ADS and give it a try, because we already used the original Promis-e for schematics and AutoCAD to do panel layouts. Promis-e ADS crashed on install. In the box were 3 stapled sheets listing known bugs. I called for support to get the program installed but was told someone would have to call me back. It's a good thing I gave up or I would have stayed at work for 3 days waiting, since it took 3 days for someone to call me back. Once I got past the installation bugs, and started using the program, I found wires listed twice on my wirelist. It happened in every case where a wire left one page and went to another page via the Sig1 and Sig2 cross-referencing. I called support and they said, "that is a bug we have known about for a few years, but it is not considered by our programmers as bad enough to merit a top priority status." They told me to just export the wire list to a word processor and erase the duplicates, like I didn't know that. But that was not the point. It defeats the purpose of an ECAD tool for me to have to repair the wirelist, risking human error. My friend, an accurate wirelist is a basic requirement of an ECAD program. Shortly thereafter we bought the program that later became known as AutoCAD Electrical. Sure, there are a few things I hope to one day see in ACADE. I would like to be able to assign item numbers to Multiple BOM entries. But even as it ships today, I can assure you that AutoCAD Electrical is still my top choice, as I continue to design to IEC standards. By the way, it is an advantage having the wires separated by layers. You can mark wires in such a way to draw attention to standard "core" wires as opposed to wires associated with options. You can automatically wire-number an entire project without being bound to only one wire gauge and type, a limitation in other ECAD programs. When one fully understands the power of ACADE it becomes clear that there is no better tool. Of course there is a wish list of new features we would all like to see, but even today ACADE has no equal. Being a deeply committed Promis-e user from early 1991 until late 1997, I was extremely reluctant to change. But after I finally dug in and learned ACADE there was no turning back.
Doug McAlexander
Design Engineer/Consultant/Instructor/Mentor specializing in
AutoCAD Electrical training and implementation support
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Web-based Support Plans AvailablePhone: (770) 841-8009
www.linkedin.com/in/doug-mcalexander-1a77623
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