Wires, osnaps and associated things

[MustangSam]

Morning all,

First of all I am a relative newbie to electrical, I have always worked in straight forward autocad,

My main issue at the moment is with entering wires, why, when you draw a wire in does it follow in the x and y axis? I apreciate wires are drawn at 90 degrees, but why does it not just follow a to b in the x axis or y axis, it makes drawing unnessesarily fiddly in my opinion, having to go back all the time and trim off all the minute little tags that collect on the end of the last wire drawn.

secondly osnaps with wires, select a wire and select your start point and the o snap apears, fine, but why why WWHHHHHYYY not when you choose your end point? eg, if you want to select a terminal block you cannot select the end point as you would in basic. also is there any way you can set it up so that it does snap to your chosen end poitn? its driving me up the wall right now, Im constantly having to persist and resist the temptation to jack it in and revert back to basic, it seems to me to be a sight more straight forward.

[johnq]

Hi Mustang Sam

I can understand you feelings.

My first project with ACE2010 was an electronic circuit.  Now that I am developing a roudy relationship with ACE (hostility has wained) I feel it is not suitable for Electronic diagrams.

I am now on ACE2012.

Some of the changes I have had to learn swapping from a CAD style electrical program where it was not necessary to draw on a grid, are:

You must decide on a grid spacing and draw on that grid.

The blocks must be drawn to fit the selected grid.  That way wires will draw nicely.

If you try to draw a wire where there is not componant snap point then ACE looks for the nearest point and will draw a wire o that snap point. This produces some interesting circuits.

I find I am constantly turning the grid snaps, osnaps and ortho on/off.  This can drive me nuts some times. 

May be a more experienced uses can suggest a desirable setup for snaps

I find it is always best to edit blocks by clicking on the TAG, not via editing the attribute.

Hope this helps and that I am not telling you how to do somthing you are familiar with and doing.

cheers  JohnQ

[Icemanau]

From the description of the SNAP behaviour, you are running an unpatched version of ACADE 2012.

There was a large amount of complaints about the new snap behaviour by the electrical community (and maybe other groups)when they changed how it operated in the 2012 release.

There are actually a couple of download for ACADE to revert the snap behaviour to the classic way it operated. You might have to do some checking at the Autodesk website to find them.

Regards Brad

[testsubject]

As far as drawing snaps are concerned, I typically will set the snap to 1/2 my rung spacing (i.e., 0.75 spacing equals a 0.375 snap setting).

You are correct in saying that you need to decide on the component spacing up front and stick to it. It will make your job so much easier if you do. Then you leave snap on most of the time for placing wires.

I am always shifting between SnapMode On/Off while inserting components. I never saw it as an issue. I went so far as to add "Toggle Osnap" to the Default and Snaps RMC menu. This makes it easier than having to move my hand to the F9 all the the time.