Voltage layer

[Anonymous]

Is there a method wherby I can have identical wires on two layers and select between the layers.  I have 480 and 120 volt circuits that are very similar except for the wire colors and would like to control the layers to change the wire colors.  If I have a red wire on one layer and a black wire over it on another layer ACEDE will assign a new wire number to the black wire even though I have the red wire layer turned off.

[Icemanau]

You can assign certain layers to different wire types.

Only problem is ACADE will change a wire to the existing layer if you end a wire on top of another. I'm not sure what would happen if the second layer was turned off, so all you can do there is try.

That said, I would find the fact that you have different wires with different voltages running on top of each other very dangerous. As far as I'm aware, all the official electrical drafting standards discourage doing this. In my extensive experience as both an electrician and designer, I have yet to see what you are proposing.

The only times the lines should come together like that is when the wires are combines into a wiring harness or multicore cable and ACADE has a completely seperate set of tools for this function.

Regards Brad

[Anonymous]

For example, for the 120V version I go directly into a power supply with red wire.  For a 480V version I have a stepdown transformer  feed by black wire to the power supply.  All the circuitry after the power supply is identical so I don't want to maintain two drawings for basically the same circuit.  Turning off a layer didn't prevent ACADE from 'seeing' the hidden wire, when I renumber the wire.

[testsubject]

As you have noticed, ACE does not work well with hidden layers that  have what amounts to duplicate data.

The system was not designed to have two or more wires occupying the same space.

Since you do not want to have 2 different drawings and just select between them, have you looked at Circuit Builder? This would allow you to select from the different power input circuits and build it on the fly when you insert it. 

[sonny3g]

If you want to have two wires on seperate layers exist in the same space, but only have one visible at a time then when you hide a wire layer, you also have to either

   1) go into the Create/Edit Wire Type dialog box, select the wire layer you DO NOT want to be treated as a wire and remove it from the list or

   2) go into the Create/Edit Wire Type dialog box and select NO in the Wire Numbering column for the wire layer you DO NOT want to have numbered.

The first  allows you to re-add it to the list of valid wire layers.  It does however remove all wires on that layer from the list of valid wires in that drawing.

The second only prevents wire numbers from being assigned to wires or lines on that layer.  It does not prevent ACADE from seeing those lines as wires and can cause audit errors.

In both cases you still have to turn off or freeze the layer that you DO NOT want visible.

Hope that helps.

Scott