Resequence Item #'s and Terminals

[Anonymous]

Sometimes when I resequence the item numbers in my panel layouts, the terminals get thrown out of whack. They get offset in a seemingly random manner, not much, but enough that the entire terminal strip has to be reinserted. I do not know if this is because all the terminals we insert are our own blocks or not because we never use the generic blank blocks that come out of the box with autocad. Is there something wrong with my blocks that could cause this? I am on ACADE 2009 SP2.

[sgsawdy]

We are still using 2008 sp2 and we wind up losing our Item numbers altogether. Whenever I use the TSE to insert terminals, all of those inserted terminals have to be manually given an item number. They will not allow automatic assignment or re-assignment. This is a real pain, but, I wrote a command p_item to let me select multiple blocks and assign the item number as xdata. This works well enough to get us by, although some types of blocks seem to require the item number be an attribute. Then I have to use a different utililty that lets me edit the values of up to three existing attributes to a selected group of blocks. Still not perfect, but it lets us get our work done.

Scott

[Anonymous]

srobinson,

I have some questions for you:

1. When talking about item numbers, are you
referring the values that are being used for balooning the footprints in the
panel layouts of the terminal strips? (P_ITEM attribute or alternatively
VIA_WD_P_ITEM xdata)

2. What tool were you running when you resequenced
the item numbers?

3. Are you saying that, in order to fix the
disaligment in the terminal footprints, you had to reinsert/rebult the strip
layout using the TSE?

Thanks,

Mauro

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<
href="mailto:srobinson@gcontrol.net">srobinson@gcontrol.net> wrote in
message
href="news:6073943@discussion.autodesk.com">news:6073943@discussion.autodesk.com...

Sometimes
when I resequence the item numbers in my panel layouts, the terminals get
thrown out of whack. They get offset in a seemingly random manner, not much,
but enough that the entire terminal strip has to be reinserted. I do not know
if this is because all the terminals we insert are our own blocks or not
because we never use the generic blank blocks that come out of the box with
autocad. Is there something wrong with my blocks that could cause this? I am
on ACADE 2009 SP2.

[Anonymous]

Sorry, I should have been more clear. I am not having problems assigning the Item numbers themselves, it is the blocks I am having problems with. They are being moved slightly off their insertion point in a random manner. They dont move much but enough to make the terminal strip look awful. Regen doesnt fix this, nor does shutting down ACAD and restarting. I have found a workaround though. If I zoom into a section of the screen that doesnt contain any terminals then perform a resequence Item # they wont do this.

[Anonymous]

Mauro,

1- This is the PITEM, which I think is what is populated when a "resequence item number" is done.

2- Not sure what you mean by what tool?

3- Yes, or the new work around is to zoom into an area that doesnt show any terminals.

[Anonymous]

Ok, thanks. Question 2 could be rephrased as: what
command were you running to have the item numbers resequenced? (your answer to
my first question reads "resequence item number", which makes me
thinking that is what you most likely ran). The reason for asking
that question was to make sure you were doing the editing using a tool
(/command) other than the TSE.

Thanks,

Mauro

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<
href="mailto:srobinson@gcontrol.net">srobinson@gcontrol.net> wrote in
message
href="news:6078298@discussion.autodesk.com">news:6078298@discussion.autodesk.com...

Mauro,
1- This is the PITEM, which I think is what is populated when a "resequence
item number" is done. 2- Not sure what you mean by what tool? 3- Yes, or the
new work around is to zoom into an area that doesnt show any
terminals.

[Anonymous]

sgsawdy,

I need to understand what workflow you are going
through when you are saying: "we wind up losing our Item numbers
altogether", so here some questions:

1. Did you assign the item numbers to your
schematic terminal symbols prior to inserting the panel layouts of the
strips?

2. If so, were you expecting that those numbers
would have been carried forward when the panel layuot of the strip was
inserted?

3. If none of the two shenarios above applies, what
are you precisely doing and what was your expected result?

I also need to understand what you mean by
"They will not allow automatic assignment or re-assignment": are you meaning
that you cannot make a selection, assign say, the first item, and having
the remaining automatically determined (and assigned) for you, so that you won't
need to assign them individually?

Thanks,

Mauro

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<sgsawdy> wrote in message
href="news:6078104@discussion.autodesk.com">news:6078104@discussion.autodesk.com...

We
are still using 2008 sp2 and we wind up losing our Item numbers altogether.
Whenever I use the TSE to insert terminals, all of those inserted terminals
have to be manually given an item number. They will not allow automatic
assignment or re-assignment. This is a real pain, but, I wrote a command
p_item to let me select multiple blocks and assign the item number as xdata.
This works well enough to get us by, although some types of blocks seem to
require the item number be an attribute. Then I have to use a different
utililty that lets me edit the values of up to three existing attributes to a
selected group of blocks. Still not perfect, but it lets us get our work done.
Scott

[dougmcalexander]

I'm just curious. Do you have any running OSNAPS? Be sure running OSNAPS are off.

[sgsawdy]

Mauro, I use TSE to create my terminal strips for my panel layouts. When using the auto item number assign/re-assign these terminals are completely ignored. Other footprints inserted by various means will all update, just not the terminals. If I use Component Editor to assign an item number, it will only assing the terminal footprint selected. So, I wrote a lisp utility to let me select multiple footprints and assign the item number to all of them as xdata in one shot.

Scott

[dougmcalexander]

Hi Mauro,

Version 2008 and previous does not automatically resequence item numbers in terminal footprints unless they contain the P_ITEM attribute. It will not resequence the xdata. If you add a P_ITEM attribute to the terminal footprint it works fine. This is an issue I had reported to Steve back in 200. It was corrected in version 2009. If this user has created his own terminal footprints all he should need to do is at the P_ITEM attribute to get the item numbers to resequence.

On a side note, when you resequence item numbers it can temporarily case wipeout regions to appear. Regen cures this.

I have a suggestion to improve the panel item resequence. It sure would have helped me on my latest project. I would like to be able to resequence according to Mount and Group. For example, I would like to have a group called Switchgear and start the balloon numbers at 1. Then a group called hardware that might begin with the next available item numbers, then a group called terminals. The idea is to be able to make sure that when sorting my BOM by item number (which is my norm), I have all like parts together. So if I have 11 different parts that make my terminal strips and I want them to be 19 through 29, I would select panel item resequence>group>terminals>starting number 19.

[sgsawdy]

Well Doug, putting the P_ITEM attribute in my terminal block footprints did the trick. Thanks.

[dougmcalexander]

You are quite welcome Scott. Glad to know it helped.

[Anonymous]

To add to this, it would be great if the item numbers could be assigned by mfg and catalog. Its a little confusing to customers and our electricians when things are all jumbled together.

[gtmiller123]

I still would like to know what is causing some of my footprint blocks to move. It's not just terminals and many blocks never move after resequence. Also I don't understand the "add p_item" attribute.

[Icemanau]

The add P_ITEM attribute probably means that one or more of you footprints does not have that attribute in it.

You will need to check the blocks and add the attribute to the blocks that are missing it.

Regards Brad