topic Re: Showing Correct Terminal Connections in AutoCAD Electrical Forum

Showing Correct Terminal Connections

dbrblg — Wed, 21 Jun 2017 15:04:36 GMT

What is the correct way of showing terminals on a drawing where they are linked internally for them to show in the terminal strip editor correctly?

Looking at the attached (Terminal Connections Coloured.bmp), you'll see there are a number of terminals which are electrically joined with wire however they are physically connected together with a jumper bar along the middle so in essence the red coloured "wires" are not wires but a jumper.

What is the correct way to show this jumper bar? If I put a wire in as shown here, which seems the logical thing to do from an electrical schematic point of view, I get a wire connecting the terminals together in the terminal strip editor which is not correct as I am using a jumper bar!! I've shown this in the second attachment (Terminal Connections Strip Editor.bmp) but with only one set of terminals for clarity.

How do you guys deal with this situation?

Thanks

Re: Showing Correct Terminal Connections

jseefdrumr — Wed, 21 Jun 2017 15:18:48 GMT

I thought the generally accepted way was to pick and choose certain of those wires and place them on a layer called 'JUMPER'. I seem to recall a post where Doug McA helped someone out with this. He may even have something about this on his site...???

For us, trying to manipulate the schematics so that they just poop out an accurate terminal strip from TSE is too much work. We still do manual counts of the nodes (wire dots) on a network and work from there to determine the exact terminal strip.

IMHO terminal strip management is the weakest point of this entire software. I sure hope someone comes along with a real solution for this, though. I'd like a better way myself. Good luck

Jim

Re: Showing Correct Terminal Connections

Icemanau — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 00:37:36 GMT

First of all, as Jim mentioned, create a layer called JUMPER. As a tip, make sure it is a totally different colour from your normal wire layers.

Next, use the Create/Edit Wire Types tool to mark it as a wire layer and set it to not be numbered.

I would suggest also doing this in your Template file so it is common through out all your dwgs.

Finally, move all the jumpers to this new layer.

To have the jumper be recognised by the TSE, there is also another step to be done.

In the Schematic, Right Click on one of the jumpered terminals and go to the Terminals selection of the menu.

From Terminals, select Edit Jumper.

Then select the terminals that are to jumpered together. This will cause the terminals to show up in the TSE as jumpered together

Add the catalogue data and it should now show up in the BOM as well.

NOTE, if you are using the Graphical representation of the terminal strip, it will not show the jumpers.

These will have to added manually AFTER you insert the terminal strip.

However, if you do this, be aware that if you add the catalogue data to the jumper footprint as well as the Jumpered schematic symbols, you may get incorrect QTY values in the BOM.

Regards Brad

Re: Showing Correct Terminal Connections

dbrblg — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 07:45:53 GMT

Thanks for this guys 🙂

Next stupid question. I have setup the wire to a specific colour and no wire numbering. I then updated the wd_m (Update Symbol Library wd_m Block command) block which indeed copied across the layer etc. But, when I update a new drawing (Update To New wd_m Block, Values, Layers command) the layer comes across but it is marked for wire numbering.

I seem to remember this is not stored in the wd_m block but I could be wrong.

What do I need to do to get the wire numbering yes/no attribute to transfer to other drawings?

Re: Showing Correct Terminal Connections

jseefdrumr — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 11:33:05 GMT

I also have a question. If the JUMPER layer is marked as not getting a wire number, how does the wire number get passed on to the jumpered terminal?

Re: Showing Correct Terminal Connections

rhesusminus — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 17:35:10 GMT

@dbrblg wrote:

What do I need to do to get the wire numbering yes/no attribute to transfer to other drawings?

You could use the Project Wide utilities:

Re: Showing Correct Terminal Connections

rhesusminus — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 17:36:54 GMT

@dbrblg wrote:

I seem to remember this is not stored in the wd_m block but I could be wrong.

I believe it's stored in an xrecord in the layer. At least that's where the "it's a wire layer" is stored.

Re: Showing Correct Terminal Connections

dbrblg — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 15:02:42 GMT

So, if I understand correctly, I use the Update To New wd_m Block, Values, Layers command to update the layers and wd_m block in the drawing and I then use the project wide utilities to import the wire 'states' (wire number, name etc) in to the drawing?

Would have thought Autodesk would have included all this in one single tool

Re: Showing Correct Terminal Connections

rhesusminus — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 16:23:17 GMT

I would say that the WD_M block is for all layers used by AcadE, EXCEPT the wire layers. Those would be more "dynamic" as you might create new wire types for different drawings/projects, while the layers used by AcadE would be more static. So, two tools for two different things.

Re: Showing Correct Terminal Connections

jseefdrumr — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 18:53:04 GMT

Trond, you may have just made my week. I've only got one real obstacle to figure out before I jump on this bandwagon too. I posted this above already, but it's easy to miss.

Referring to Brad's instructions, if the JUMPER layer is marked as not getting a wire number, how does the wire number get passed on to the jumpered terminal?

This is the only thing that keeps me from trying this.

Jim

Re: Showing Correct Terminal Connections

Anonymous — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 21:23:27 GMT

You're going to have at least 1 numbered wire terminating on a jumpered block----TSE passes the number to all jumpered blocks (it's been working for me so far)

My steps: (probably a convoluted way to do it)

Do normal schematic

Run wire numbering

Drop terminal blocks as needed

Change wire type to "JUMPER"

Open TSE

Install jumpers--wire numbers are already populated

I'm sure some of the more experienced guys have a faster method

Re: Showing Correct Terminal Connections

rhesusminus — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 22:14:44 GMT

Just did a quick test, and as long as the terminals are connected with a JUMPER-wire, this wire carries the wire number between the terminals, no matter if the JUMPER-wire type is set to receive a wire number or not.

If I run a DWG audit to show wires, you can see that the JUMPER-wire is connected to the wire number:

Re: Showing Correct Terminal Connections

Icemanau — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 00:18:19 GMT

The No Wire Number setting only prevents ACADE from assigning or displaying a number on the layer.

It does not prevent the layer from passing existing wire numbers along the various wires.

That said, if you use a terminal that changes the wire number, then the jumper will not pass the wire number and have a blank wire number coming out of any terminal. The same thing happens if you link the two 'Change Wire Number' terminals through the 'Edit Jumper' function, any wires going through will lose their wire number.

If you have trouble with wire numbers not transferring through terminals properly, check which terminal has been used first.

Regards Brad

Re: Showing Correct Terminal Connections

dbrblg — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 07:23:36 GMT

It's a shame they are two different functions as this just means you have to do two separate operations to achieve a single result. I can also see that there are advantages to having them separate too....

It's slightly annoying the say this works in relation to wire number changing terminals. I would have thought a better solution to having layers which do not take wire numbers would have been if there was an option to exclude the wire termination from the TSE instead of ignoring the layer numbering and putting one on anyway.

Would cause less confusion!!

Re: Showing Correct Terminal Connections

jseefdrumr — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 11:11:52 GMT

Thanks to all who posted the info on wire numbers passing through jumpers. I did a little test drive over the weekend and it looks like I may be able to implement this workflow here. I've been hoping to get to this point almost since I began on this software 2 years ago.

Jim