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Looking into Acad Electrical

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Message 1 of 4
Darthyoga
242 Views, 3 Replies

Looking into Acad Electrical

Hello, we are looking into buying this software and I was wondering from a Cad Managers perpective how you would rate the difficulty of moving over to this product from Autocad. We only have a few people to train but iut looks like we will need to retrain our engineers to use standard spreadsheets etc.

Did it take long to set up?

What were your greatest difficulties?

I have been hypnotized by the marketing and would like to know the reality of it.

Thanks!
3 REPLIES 3
Message 2 of 4

Good Day,
I have worked for a reseller for over 5 years, now I am a CAD Manager at a company that uses AutoCAD Electrical. For the most part it is a pretty easy to manage product. It really depends on how much you want to "configure/customize" for the time to setup. For example if you want all custom symbols, it will take longer than if you use the standard out of the box symbols.

Some of the difficulties were getting end users used to assigning some of the data such as BOM, Locations etc... They felt it's taking longer to design, however they weren't thinking about the hours and hours that were saved on the back end of a project with creating the BOM.

All in all after seeing several products over the years I really do think AutoCAD Electrical is a great product. If you have any questions feel free to email me at robert.stein@yourrealsoftwaresolutions.com

Thanks
Robert Stein
Real Software Solutions
robert.stein@yourrealsoftwaresolutions.com
www.yourrealsoftwaresolutions.com
Rob Stein
Real Software Solutions
robert.stein@yourrealsoftwaresolutions.com
Message 3 of 4
dougmcalexander
in reply to: Darthyoga

Proper training is the key. I currently use three of the top Electrical CADD programs. All are very good. AutoCAD Electrical can seem somewhat intimidating at first becaise it is incredibly powerful. People have the impression that, since the name says AutoCAD, they should be able to just pick it up and use it, relying on their knowledge of plain vanilla AutoCAD. But once you install AutoCAD Electrical you will see that the menus for the electrical functions far outweigh the menus for the standard drafting part. The electrical portion makes up probably 85% of what is AutoCAD Electrical. So people buy it and think that it is difficult to implement, when the truth is that it does require training.

The good news is that many of the commands in AutoCAD Electrical are designed to make the mundane rudimentary day-to-day tasks extremely easy and semi-automated. This is where AutoCAD Electrical excels. If you buy the competitors they will insist upon selling you training, because they know that is the key to your satisfaction as a customer. But it is just as imperative to get properly trainined on AutoCAD Electrical, regardless of what you know about plain "vanilla" AutoCAD. Plain vanilla AutoCAD is a drafting tool, not a series of relational databases like all of the intelligent CADD programs. Harnessing the intelligent CADD software is the key to the future productivity of your company, but you must commit to a full implementation plan.

I have taught in Europe, North America, and Australia and everywhere it's the same. People either did not take training or were not properly trained the first time. If you purchase one of the competitors it is just understood that you should be trained. I recently attended training for one of AutoCAD Electrical's competitors and it was 5 days. I teach a 4-day work-flow based AutoCAD Electrical course that covers basic administration and user-level functionality from blank screen to reports. I wish I could take 5 days and slow the pace a bit, because there is so much to show, but AutoCAD customers seem to have an aversion to training. I also have a 3-day course for those who already have AutoCAD Electrical implemented and seek user-level training only. I also offer 2-day update training courses for those moving from an older release to a newer release.

No matter which brand you choose, proper training is the key.

Regards,

Doug McAlexander
www.ecadconsultant.com

Edited by: dougmcalexander on Nov 25, 2009 9:16 PM Edited by: dougmcalexander on Nov 25, 2009 9:19 PM


Doug McAlexander


Design Engineer/Consultant/Instructor/Mentor specializing in AutoCAD Electrical training and implementation support

Phone and Web-based Support Plans Available

Phone: (770) 841-8009

www.linkedin.com/in/doug-mcalexander-1a77623




Please Accept as Solution if I helped you. Likes are also much appreciated.
Message 4 of 4
flyFisher67
in reply to: Darthyoga

I'm not actually a CAD manager, but have been involved in the implementation of AE for the consulting business I'm employed by. We have been using it for apporoximately 18 months now. I believe that it is a very good product, but you must be prepared to spend time and money getting it set up correctly, and also on training. As Doug has correctly said, training is very important. All the electrical draftspersons here went through Doug's training (thanks Doug), and thouroughly benefited from it. Having said that, it really was the tip of the iceburg in terms of getting fully up to speed with AE. Having an expert user on-site for a few weeks would be a huge benefit.
The time involved in getting everything set up really does come down to how much your requirements, in terms of symbols, standards, and products, differ from what is offered 'out of the box' with AE. Here are a couple of thoughts that may help you decide.
1. Can you adopt one of the standard symbol libraries as your own, without having to come up with large numbers of 'custom' symbols? This can save a huge amount of time. The type of projects you do is also a consideration here. Do you mainly produce control/automation schematics, power or protection systems, maybe building services etc. I believe that, out of the box, AE is more suited to control/automation systems. We are in the process of developing a standard design for a transmission line protection system. This has meant that we have spent significant time developing a set of custom protection relay symbols. These have taken a long time to develop, but now that we have them close to completion, we expect to reap the rewards for years to come.
2. Does the standard catalogue database have the majority of products that you currently use for your projects? If not, do the suppliers of the products you use have the information readily available for you to enter into the AE catalogue database? We have found that extracting data from suppliers who don't already have their products in the AE database has been difficult. Be prepared to have a resource entering products into the catalogue database for weeks, rather than days. Also, for every new product that you enter into the catalogue database, you really should enter the relevant information for that device into the pinlist table for that device (to give you the correct terminal numbers when you insert it), and also produce a footprint (cad block) to use for layouts and link this footprint block to the catalogue number via the footprint database. All of this takes time, but without going to these lengths, the power of AE is significantly reduced.

Bottom line is that you cannot expect to get huge gains with AE without first investing time and money in setting it up correctly. I don't think that we had any idea how much it would cost to do this until we jumped in. However, I believe we have made the right decision.

Hope this helps you.
Mike

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