topic Re: multiple connection points in AutoCAD Electrical Forum

multiple connection points

swansbh — Tue, 17 Oct 2017 17:13:46 GMT

I am looking for some advice from Doug McAlexander or Trond on this one, I could use your guys expert opinions on this.

I have a user requesting a horizontal symbol to have three types of connection points on a terminal for a modified version of relay coil HCR1T on the terminal "circles".

One "left or right" connection point on the outside "left or right" quadrant depending upon which side of the symbol you are looking at. One Top and One bottom.

See attached example of what I am talking about.

1. Will this cause issues with the software or project?

2. Will this cause issues with a wire list report?

What is your recommendation on this? I know typically this type of symbol should only have horizontal connection points but would like to hear what you guys have to say about this.

Re: multiple connection points

jseefdrumr — Tue, 17 Oct 2017 18:13:04 GMT

@dougmcalexander
@rhesusminus

1,2,3, GO! It's a race from here lol

Just FYI, I'm pretty sure you're good to go with this setup, it's no different than a 3-wire prox symbol in essence. But let's get the big guns in here to verify just to be sure...

Jim

Re: multiple connection points

dougmcalexander — Tue, 17 Oct 2017 19:21:37 GMT

Trond might be sleeping at the moment, so I guess I will take a stab at this to keep you from waiting. The attached screen capture displays a VCR1T_HL with 3 wire connections. I copied the VCR1T and renamed in to VCR1T_HL to represent that it has a 3rd wire connection placed on the left side for a horizontal wire connection. The connection attributes were filled in automatically with pin assignments defined in the Catalog Database, as shown in the attached screen capture. The wire list will not have an issue with this.

You mentioned that there will be only one wire connection in the horizontal plane on your symbol, so I would suggest that you name the symbol VCR1T_HL for the version with a horizontal left wire connection and VCR1T_HR for the version with a horizontal right wire connection. The reason I named them beginning with VCR1T instead of HCR1T is because there are more vertical wire connections than there are horizontal.

Note: Do not attempt to handle this as a dynamic block. AutoCAD Electrical does not play well with dynamic blocks, because it needs the block name to stay the same.

Now, I must warn you that the pin list data is written in order of the TERMxx attribute names, so in my attached example, the assignment of 1 from the Catalog Database was written to TERM01 (on the top), 2 was written to TERM02 (on the bottom), and 3 was written to TERM03 (on the left). So in your two blocks, VCR1T_HL and VCR1T_HR you must use TERM03 for the left side version and for the right side version. You can create the VCR1T_HL first, then copy and rename it VCR1T_HR. Open VCR1T_HR for editing and move X4TERM03 and TERM03 over to the right-hand quadrant. Be sure to rename X4TERM03 to X1TERM03, so the wire will trim properly, and so the wire list generator will detect the correct pin assignment.

I will go ahead and attach my 3-pin VCR1T_HL and VCR1T_HR symbols in case you want to use them, instead of having to create them yourself.