ACE Content Sharing website

[controlsgirl]

Is there a place where users share content specific to AutoCAD Electrical?(true ACE symbols, footprints, part, catalogs, pinlists, plc databases, etc.) There are lots of websites that host "dumb" blocks. EPLAN and Sketchup have user and company developed, searchable content databases directly linked to their software. You can find user created websites with for content sharing specific to Solidworks and Sketchup, etc. I have yet to find this for ACE.

I've been a user for a long time now. Three times I have negotiated companies to purchase/upgrade vanilla to Electrical. I have not been able to prove the benefits to any of them. I do both hardware and software. Each time I am given hardware projects I have the same problems. The biggest issue is content. I customize content. I lose it when I switch jobs. I switch jobs and now I work with welders instead of test PCs or robots, etc. I try extremely hard to learn what files need to be kept extremely so that I can take my hard work with me when I leave a company, get a new computer, reinstall software, etc. However, knowing what is needed is only a portion oof the battle. I then need to put all of these files in place and make sure everything is pointing to the right location.

Basically, everytime I have to change companies, computers, etc, I have to start from scratch. Right now, I would love it if someone out there has already created a nice template for Siemens S120 book case style components. I know how to do it myself.

[rhesusminus]

I really would like to see the same. One library where you could download all the information needed, directly into AcadE when you need it.

Only question is, who should keep it up to date? Autodesk? The manufacturers?

Best thing would of course be if all ecad providers could agree on a common standard for exchanging data/symbols.

[rhesusminus]

And.. The panel symbols must be delivered in both imperial and metric units.
What about schematic symbols? They also must be delivered in different symbol standards (JIC, IEC etc.) Should they be a part of this?

[ccad2509]

you know the answer

like this

https://wscaduniverse.com/

or like this

http://www.eplandata.de/portal/portal.php?lang=en_EN

where parts manufacturese have formed a relationship with a Ecad product works well for Eplan and Wscad wonder why autodesk dosent do it but if you dig deep into this forum you will find the answer which is autodesk wants the parts manufactures to do all the work for no return

im sure someone will give a long explanation going into different fields and while doing so plug they own training and technical support services in the process to why its better to create you own symbols and waste time on admistative work rather than be productive in your work day

over to you Doug

[controlsgirl]

I think it would be fine if users started it and maintained it. It is from the individual users that you will find the more custom solutions that might fit exactly what you are looking for. There could be a rating system per user and file, sort or like any other file sharing website.

As far as symbols, ACE does provide a huge amount in all different standards. Footprints, my favorite look is a rectangle with a tag inside. It is easy enough to pull that from a data sheet. However, the ACE database that collects those dimensions would be nice if everyone could share the databases that they have created manually. 

[controlsgirl]

---

@rhesusminus wrote:
And.. The panel symbols must be delivered in both imperial and metric units.
What about schematic symbols? They also must be delivered in different symbol standards (JIC, IEC etc.) Should they be a part of this?

---

I think it would be fine if users started it and maintained it. It is from the individual users that you will find the more custom solutions that might fit exactly what you are looking for. There could be a rating system per user and file, sort or like any other file sharing website.

As far as symbols, ACE does provide a huge amount in all different standards. Footprints, my favorite look is a rectangle with a tag inside. It is easy enough to pull that from a data sheet. However, the ACE database that collects those dimensions would be nice if everyone could share the databases that they have created manually. 

[controlsgirl]

---

@ccad2509 wrote:

you know the answer

like this

https://wscaduniverse.com/

or like this

http://www.eplandata.de/portal/portal.php?lang=en_EN

where parts manufacturese have formed a relationship with a Ecad product works well for Eplan and Wscad wonder why autodesk dosent do it but if you dig deep into this forum you will find the answer which is autodesk wants the parts manufactures to do all the work for no return

im sure someone will give a long explanation going into different fields and while doing so plug they own training and technical support services in the process to why its better to create you own symbols and waste time on admistative work rather than be productive in your work day

over to you Doug

---

lol Yes, like those. 

I have spoken with the ecad team at the North American headquarters and they said that they actually seek out all of the manufacturers to get information, and then they create it themselves. I do not know how accurate it is. I've never used WSCAD but ePlan is $14,000 for us, on its own without the panel or pneu/hyd modules. That is a much steeper price than ACE.

[jseefdrumr]

Controlsgirl,

I like the idea of a user-submitted website. The question is, who would host it?

I think that Autodesk would actually benefit from this:

*They'd have an easy way to see what users do for symbols, vs what their developers think we should use

*They'd be able to address the oft-complained-about lack of up-to-date catalog information, by giving us a place to handle it ourselves

*They could gain insight into our workflows, as well as the types of symbols we need that aren't currently supplied (hygrometers, for instance...that one's popped up on me three times in the last year)

This could serve as an adjunct to the Idea Station, where we don't post just ideas, but actual things. Databases. Symbols. Scripts. Make them widely available for other users to use (at their own risk). A rating system, as you suggest, would cull out the junk. It would also show us what's 'hot' among users as manufacturing trends ebb and flow.

If you make this an idea, I'd vote for it.

Jim

[ccad2509]

Hello Controlsgirl

I think you’re a little bit misinformed about Eplan

standard Eplan has a 2D panel module which is far superior to the offering in ACADE

and as for Pneumatics and Hydraulics the added Eplan module is for mechanical engineers

I have a set of pneumatics and hydraulic symbols which work perfectly ok in normal Eplan

the pro panel module which I’m using at the moment blows away the half-hearted attempt by Autodesk to link inventor to ACADE

it just works and is simple to use you don’t need to learn all the stuff to model in 3-D before you could be productive but Autodesk haven’t figured that out yet

us electrical guys don’t want to know about constraints/sweeps/extrusions/part assemblies etc. we just want a 3-D model that works 

which is what the pro panel does it just imports the 3-D model shells it to get rid of the crap we don’t need then it’s just some simple buttons to attach connection points and how the item mates to objects (yes you can configure a rail mounted item to automatically mate only with a din rail something inventor needs to sort out)

and as to cost same argument again and again its expensive yes, it is but sit back and think about it

do you want a product which is a bunch of lisp routines bolted on top of a mechanical cad package?

or do you want a product that is designed and built by electrical engineers for electrical engineers?

and this is where you won’t get any answer from Autodesk

Eplan is fast very fast when I’m designing in Eplan I’m at least 5-10 faster than I would do it in ACADE (all Acade promotional comparisons is too plain Autocad not to any other ECAD product think about that one)

you do the math if you can turn a job around faster your overheads are reduced and time to market is faster

and as to your favourite method of showing items in a panel a box with the tag inside Eplan doesn’t even need a macro (Eplan version of block)

it works like this

when you insert the part into a 2D Backplate it does the following

1) looks for a macro reference in the parts database and inserts it into the panel

2) looks for dimensions in the parts database and creates a box to the dimensions and puts the tag in the middle

3) if no dimensions are in the parts database a pop up menu appears where you add the dimensions and Eplan writes back that information into the parts database

what I have now is a 3TB western digital NAS drive with all my cad data on so I can access it via the internet

so I have built up a lot of data in Eplan/ Acade/Wscad and See electrical which I can get to no problem

[controlsgirl]

Before I respond to everything else, the real question is this: Are you willing to share your 3TBs of stuff???

First, let me say that I believe you and I share very similar mindsets. You do not have to convince me to spend money on great tools.

Let me also say that I am not misinformed but I should have clarified. Yes, the 2D comes with the standard install but the 3D does not. I am 60% positive that the 3D also includes the wire routing function. I was told directly from the North America salesman that propanel only comes as an added module unless you buy the GM/Chrysler package. 

Did you create your hyd and pneu symbols/macros? 

"Us electrical guys"...please do not speak as if I have not been doing this for years. I have been mostly doing software design but I am constantly debugging and fixing hardware designs. You should watch a video on constraints. In 2D they are extremely useful. I think it is extremely silly that I do not see them used more often. 

As for the cost argument, there is a reason why it is the same argument over and over again. I have to claw and scratch just to get employers to cough up an extra 1.5k for something more than vanilla ACAD. ePlan is more than double. I am using ACE 2012 and my employers will not budge in buying me a newer version. Technically, I am sharing one version with another co-worker who refuses to learn any of the ACE functions. He uses it just like vanilla. .I could tell you exactly what makes sense to me but that is not going to convince the other 6 Controls Engineers that I work with to stop using DRAFTSIGHT. Yes, you read that right. They have access to vanilla CAD and they use DRAFTSIGHT...the free version. Literally, I work with people making 30k more than me who print off every drawing in a package one by one even though ACAD has had this function built in for how many years? I believe that the problem with ACE is similar to the problem that America faces as a country. It is the people. Coal is a dying industry and people still voted for Trump so that they could go back to their day job of doing the same job over and over again, never having to learn something new. Most of our colleagues cannot get enough of "brute force and ignorance". Have you noticed this? I am lucky enough that Autodesk continues to support ACE because without it, I would be screwed. There is no way that I could convince employers to venture into ePlan, WSCAD, solidworks electrical, etc. 

I can tell you that from what I have experienced is that ePlan has its drawbacks as well. I love that eplan is quick when it comes to linking everything but IMHO they could learn a thing or two from ACE: 

• It is MUCH faster to draw in ACE. I can create a ladder, add rungs, add devices, remove wires, add wires...much faster that is possible with eplan (unless a macro is created for an entire circuit).
• There is no command line in ePlan, which BLOWS. Use your left hand for keyboard commands and configure your right mouse click to be "enter" and watch how much faster you can work.
• Wire dots automatically appear. I just think of all the extra time that I would have to spend adding stupid wire tee components. 
• eplan is built like many of the other German apps that I have used. The interface is extremely cluttered and it includes so much irrelevant functionality all at once. 
• wire numbering!? NFPA symbols?
• eplan includes the ability to edit and change properties to components that do not use those properties. On top of that, if you do edit one of those parameters, you risk breaking the function. I hear people use the excuse that users should know what they are doing but I find that extremely counter-intuitive to great software design. 

p.s. Do you work for yourself?

---

ccad2509 wrote:

Hello Controlsgirl

I think you’re a little bit misinformed about Eplan

standard Eplan has a 2D panel module which is far superior to the offering in ACADE

and as for Pneumatics and Hydraulics the added Eplan module is for mechanical engineers

I have a set of pneumatics and hydraulic symbols which work perfectly ok in normal Eplan

the pro panel module which I’m using at the moment blows away the half-hearted attempt by Autodesk to link inventor to ACADE

it just works and is simple to use you don’t need to learn all the stuff to model in 3-D before you could be productive but Autodesk haven’t figured that out yet

us electrical guys don’t want to know about constraints/sweeps/extrusions/part assemblies etc. we just want a 3-D model that works 

which is what the pro panel does it just imports the 3-D model shells it to get rid of the crap we don’t need then it’s just some simple buttons to attach connection points and how the item mates to objects (yes you can configure a rail mounted item to automatically mate only with a din rail something inventor needs to sort out)

and as to cost same argument again and again its expensive yes, it is but sit back and think about it

do you want a product which is a bunch of lisp routines bolted on top of a mechanical cad package?

or do you want a product that is designed and built by electrical engineers for electrical engineers?

and this is where you won’t get any answer from Autodesk

Eplan is fast very fast when I’m designing in Eplan I’m at least 5-10 faster than I would do it in ACADE (all Acade promotional comparisons is too plain Autocad not to any other ECAD product think about that one)

you do the math if you can turn a job around faster your overheads are reduced and time to market is faster

and as to your favourite method of showing items in a panel a box with the tag inside Eplan doesn’t even need a macro (Eplan version of block)

it works like this

when you insert the part into a 2D Backplate it does the following

1) looks for a macro reference in the parts database and inserts it into the panel

2) looks for dimensions in the parts database and creates a box to the dimensions and puts the tag in the middle

3) if no dimensions are in the parts database a pop up menu appears where you add the dimensions and Eplan writes back that information into the parts database

what I have now is a 3TB western digital NAS drive with all my cad data on so I can access it via the internet

so I have built up a lot of data in Eplan/ Acade/Wscad and See electrical which I can get to no problem

[ccad2509]

Hello Controls girl

I do enjoy these Eplan myths same stuff keeps appearing yet nobody comes up with an original issue it seems that the problem here is people are trying to apply Autocad logic to Eplan and then assume it doesn’t work the Autocad way then you can’t do it

I will send you a private message detailing the rest of your comments as its pretty big

• It is MUCH faster to draw in ACE. I can create a ladder, add rungs, add devices, remove wires, add wires...much faster that is possible with Eplan (unless a macro is created for an entire circuit).

This doesn’t make much sense the ladders just work maybe you had the wrong drawing template set (Eplan has hundreds of pre-set templates and forms straight out of the box)

You can use the cont. c cont. v keyboard commands to copy symbols and it will number the symbols automatically on pasting into your page

try that with ACADE 2012 and see how far you get!!!

Or just press the inset button to launch the symbol explorer or RHS mouse button

Just use the delete button to remove any wires add wires well you don’t even need to think about that one if a two symbols are in the horizontal or vertical plain and the connection points are aligned then the symbol will automatically connect

 if you don’t want them to connect those two devices just use Cntrl Shift U and it will remove the line

There is even the smart connect command where you can drag part of the circuit out of horizontal or vertical alignment and Eplan will add all the bends automatically to create the modified circuit (no function in Acade for that command)

And here’s a really good tip if you use the copy and paste command go to another page paste the information into the page just by pressing X will align the information in the x axis as per the original information and pressing Y will then align in the Y axis far better than creating a saved circuit then re inserting the saved circuit and then aligning the circuit which are the 3 distinct steps you need to take in Acade to achieve the same results

Simple and effective

And as for macros that’s the tip of the iceberg let’s just say the Acade circuit builder is a bad attempt to copy this functionality whereas the EPLAN macros an average user can programme it not like with circuit builder where you need to be able to programme in LISP to get it to work (see various failed attempts to do this on this forum)

• There is no command line in ePlan, which BLOWS. Use your left hand for keyboard commands and configure your right mouse click to be "enter" and watch how much faster you can work.

Why would you want a command line there is over 70 shortcut commands on the keyboard that some even do 2/3/4 equivalent ACADE commands in one keystroke

You can set up custom toolbars far easier than you can do editing and creating a profile in ACADE

• Wire dots automatically appear. I just think of all the extra time that I would have to spend adding stupid wire tee components. 

Ok not quite sure what you’re talking about here

Actually they don’t just appear you have to use a command to draw a wire from a device to another wire/device which may include a number of shortcuts to get the connection to connect correctly

How is that any faster than just going to the toolbar selecting a t-piece and then dropping it into a circuit where it will auto connect (also there is the keyboard short cuts so you can be lazy and not even move your mouse to the connection toolbar)

but here is one very important thing the dots/t_pieces cover two distinct processes that you have to do in Acade

• Visually show a connection
• Force the wire sequence so you don’t have to run the wire sequence command and go through every connection to force Acade to sequence your wires correctly and then write all that information back (note I seen reports of bugs on this command in this forum)
  
  so if you take into account to make you project work properly you need to do both functions then you will find just by using the T-pieces you are actually faster than Acade that’s not including the 6 different ways that I can think of to screw up the wiring in Acade when drawing wires and connecting them
  
  

• Eplan is built like many of the other German apps that I have used. The interface is extremely cluttered and it includes so much irrelevant functionality all at once.

Eplan has a far better front interface you can easily detach all the windows spread them over a dual screen close or open a toolbar create your own toolbars and save the set up if you don’t like the way its set up re configure the screen to what you like it’s that easy 

• wire numbering!

The wire numbering system is the best I’ve have ever seen it works several levels above what ACADE can offer

 you can have multiple different number formats saved in the project which will all number at the same time so you can have a numbering format for 3 phase supply that’s different from your 24vdc control which is different from say showing the PLC address on wire connected to the PLC card all in set up and numbering simultaneously

How would you achieve the same results in Acade?

And here is where it gets really smart because the number format also includes what Eplan calls the net configuration you can then define how each number format works as it goes through symbols i.e. does the number change or stay the same so in this case I can have 3 number formats which number wire numerically different from each other and behave completely differently as the wire numbers travel across the project ?

no need to have several different Terminal symbols in Eplan so one type transfers the wire number and the other dosent just a symbol for a teminal the number format net conficurtion dictates how the terminal works in regard to wire numbers

? NFPA symbols?

Unlike Acade the symbol files are current and up to date somebody needs to tell those guys at Autodesk that the IEC 60617 symbol set was withdrawn a number of years ago

And yes NFPA Ghost and IEC symbols come as standard and if your really adventurous you can have up to 20 different symbol sets running in your project which all go through a much simpler and easier to use symbol navigator compared to Acade

• Eplan includes the ability to edit and change properties to components that do not use those properties. On top of that, if you do edit one of those parameters, you risk breaking the function. I hear people use the excuse that users should know what they are doing but I find that extremely counter-intuitive to great software design.

Ok this really is a load of misinformation

• Eplan symbols work fundamentally different from the way ACADE symbols work
  
• They live in a separate symbol file external to the Eplan project you can then modify the external symbol and it will automatically update all instances of that symbol without the need to run through a complex and time consuming block replacement routine
  
  
• Eplan symbols have over a 1000 standard attributes and over 200 user defined attributes what’s fundamentally different here is you have visibility schemes set in the symbol
  
  this means when you open a symbol durring normal working you have a pull down menu which will then apply a visibility scheme this scheme is easily configurable and you can display any attribute apply size colour position and font information to each attribute so you can have multiple saved display formats inside you symbol
  
• If you decide to modify a visibility scheme you can save it as a new scheme or as the old scheme and here’s another clever feature because if you save the scheme as previous Eplan will ask you if you want to apply this new scheme to all these symbols in a project and instantaneously changes all the symbols (no block swap function needed here)
  
• Each default symbol out of the box has 8 variants 4 positional variants with the tag on the left hand side and 4 with the tag on the right when you insert the symbol just by pushing the tab key will rotate the symbol through the variants (now if ACADE could fix the bugs that don’t let dynamic blocks work in ACADE you could have the same functionality but hey it’s only been 10 years since Dynamic blocks were added to plain AutoCAD give it another 10 years and they might actually do something about it)
  
  but on reflectintion with the current naming convention you wont be able to do that in Acade as you have vertical and horizontal formatted symbols
  
  
• Herse a good one because the default symbol libraries have been very cleverly set up between the standards the same symbol has the same Eplan name which means you can just go into settings swap the NFPA library for the Ghost library and all symbols in your project will change to the new standard
  
  
• You can’t break the function on a symbol that’s unless you do something like this go to the editing menu explode the symbol and then ungroup the elements in the exploded symbol which basically means you’re trying to apply Autocad logic to a Eplan system or in simpler terms your trying to apply baseball rules to Cricket they both have a bat and a ball and 2 teams and that’s where the it ends
  
  
• Now if you trying to explode an ACADE block modify it for that page then block it again then what I personally have got to say about that is that’s bad engineering practice you should always create your own symbol correctly the reasons why are as follows
  1. You drive consistency through your projects by selecting symbols rather than modifying symbols continuously
  2. You won’t run into issues if your trying to do a project wide block swap and here is what happened to me I was handed an Acade project to modify the VSD symbols needed modifying so I modified first VSD symbol when I did the project wide block swap I then found out that the previous engineer had been lazy and modified the same block into 4 different VSD’s which totally trashed my project and it took me most of the day to recover (unlike Eplan where the undo command will work at this level)
• Eplan has a Black box function where you create a box drop normal symbols into the box and Eplan then now knows not to look at the individual symbols but treat it as a custom symbol (no function exists in any shape or form in Acade for this)

[hinsonjoey]

The conversation of which is better, ACADE or EPlan, is irrelevant to the customer who has standardized on ACADE platform.  Instead, the conversation should be how do we get AutoDesk to put some resources into ACADE to make it better.  I keep getting frustrated with the yearly updates that add no or little improvement to ACADE.  AutoDesk has treated the Electrical portion as a cash cow by not spending any money for real improvement.  Bentley has done the same thing for Promis.e.  It would be wonderful not being an afterthought to a mechanical package for a change.

[ccad2509]

First there is loads of rubbish said about Eplan in the USA and when it comes down to it every time it’s been proven Eplan can do the alleged “it can’t do this “or do something a lot better than ACADE!!!!!

And you have inadvertently hit the nail on the head with the likes of Autodesk /Bentley and Solidworks are using their Electrical Apps as a secondary cash cow to their mechanical products

If you look at where the real innovation is happening it’s at Eplan, Wscad and See electrical which are Electrical CAE apps first and treat mechanical as a secondary function

But then again the same comment comes around “I don’t need to know what the completion is doing” and then you get the big surprise when you post an Idea on the ideas section and guess what all those pesky competitors that you don’t need to know about have implemented that idea you want several years ago (and you have to remember that if the idea is not already being implemented then it will take a couple of years for it to come about assuming that it can be codded and somebody at Autodesk decides they are going to try to implement it )

The Eplan Content sharing website is a success because Eplan want to engage with the component manufactures and get sales leads from people selecting and downloading components (you don’t get something for nothing)

Then you look at what Autodesk is trying to do and you can understand why component manufactures are flocking to Eplan and ignoring Autodesk

[controlsgirl]

---

@ccad2509 wrote:

Hello Controls girl

I do enjoy these Eplan myths same stuff keeps appearing yet nobody comes up with an original issue it seems that the problem here is people are trying to apply Autocad logic to Eplan and then assume it doesn’t work the Autocad way then you can’t do it

I will send you a private message detailing the rest of your comments as its pretty big

• It is MUCH faster to draw in ACE. I can create a ladder, add rungs, add devices, remove wires, add wires...much faster that is possible with Eplan (unless a macro is created for an entire circuit).

This doesn’t make much sense the ladders just work maybe you had the wrong drawing template set (Eplan has hundreds of pre-set templates and forms straight out of the box)

Ladders work similarly but you have to add wire tees everywhere. There also isn't the flexibility with scoot, wire trim, add rung, etc (and it is esp slow because I do not know of any existing keyboard commands in eplan for these edit tools. If you use your mouse alot in ACAD, I suggest learning/creating some aliases. Then set your right mouse button to enter. Use your left hand for command calling and the spacebar and right click as enter. Set the right click button to be enter while in all other modes. I like the time sensitive right-click.

However, It does make sense because in ACE you do not have to add a symbol and determine what version of it that you want to use for each and every insert for a wire tee. ACE is smart enough to know that there is a tee there and if you want to change the shape, you can do so later. It makes it extremely fast when throwing components in the space and then linking them together, not just in rungs but in any weird way. 

You can use the cont. c cont. v keyboard commands to copy symbols and it will number the symbols automatically on pasting into your page

try that with ACADE 2012 and see how far you get!!!

I'm confused at what you are getting at with this. Ever use the command AECOPYCOMP?

Or just press the inset button to launch the symbol explorer or RHS mouse button

I do not want to have to press any button to insert a wire tee! I do not want to have to deal with another component. I want it to be a passive symbol that knows where it belongs and knows when it doesn't belong as I trim wires or delete components. 

Just use the delete button to remove any wires add wires well you don’t even need to think about that one if a two symbols are in the horizontal or vertical plain and the connection points are aligned then the symbol will automatically connect

That is great, but you have to add wire tees everywhere. 

 if you don’t want them to connect those two devices just use Cntrl Shift U and it will remove the line

There is even the smart connect command where you can drag part of the circuit out of horizontal or vertical alignment and Eplan will add all the bends automatically to create the modified circuit (no function in Acade for that command)

Yes but again, you have to have placed wire tees in all of the appropriate places. I find that AESCOOT is efficient enough or using the AE copy/move circuit. 

And here’s a really good tip if you use the copy and paste command go to another page paste the information into the page just by pressing X will align the information in the x axis as per the original information and pressing Y will then align in the Y axis far better than creating a saved circuit then re inserting the saved circuit and then aligning the circuit which are the 3 distinct steps you need to take in Acade to achieve the same results

Simple and effective

In this case, I do not use the save circuit. I just use CTRL+SHIFT+C (copy with basepoint) and then I do a retag. I would love to see ACE make the copy circuit work across drawings. I like the alignment option in eplan but it doesn't add much to using copy with basepoint in ACE. 

And as for macros that’s the tip of the iceberg let’s just say the Acade circuit builder is a bad attempt to copy this functionality whereas the EPLAN macros an average user can programme it not like with circuit builder where you need to be able to programme in LISP to get it to work (see various failed attempts to do this on this forum)

I'm confused at what you mean with the macro and symbolbuilder+lisp. Using the symbol builder is a learning curve but once you know naming conventions and you use the correct attributes things go fairly smoothly. This reminds me of another VERY basic thing that eplan cannot do. 

• component link lines!?

• There is no command line in ePlan, which BLOWS. Use your left hand for keyboard commands and configure your right mouse click to be "enter" and watch how much faster you can work.

Why would you want a command line there is over 70 shortcut commands on the keyboard that some even do 2/3/4 equivalent ACADE commands in one keystroke

I have not learned the shortcut commands in eplan but I asked about many of them and the trainer wasn't so familiar. (the trainer was the NA trainer employed by eplan.) Anywho, with ACAD I can keep so many of my keyboard commands to one and two letter combos that I use with my left hand only. Right hand on the mouse.

You can set up custom toolbars far easier than you can do editing and creating a profile in ACADE
I can setup custom toolbars in eplan or in ACADE far easier than editing and creating a profiel in ACADE? I do not have to create an entire profile. I have my set of aliases. I dock my properties to the right and my project to the left. How much more custom do I need? I would love it if ACE made it much easier to be able to migrate all of the changes I made to the interface. 

• Wire dots automatically appear. I just think of all the extra time that I would have to spend adding stupid wire tee components. 

Ok not quite sure what you’re talking about here

 Wire tees, the annoying little things that you have to add in eplan everywhere in order for it to connect all of the wires. 

Actually they don’t just appear you have to use a command to draw a wire from a device to another wire/device which may include a number of shortcuts to get the connection to connect correctly

If the components are between two ladder rails, I just use AEADDRUNG and it connects all of them in a line like eplan. However, If I add a ladder and a bunch of rungs and then draw a wire straight down, it'll connect them all and then I can just trim (with fence). All wire connections are there. No inserting components. Maybe I'll make a short video of this. 

How is that any faster than just going to the toolbar selecting a t-piece and then dropping it into a circuit where it will auto connect (also there is the keyboard short cuts so you can be lazy and not even move your mouse to the connection toolbar)

In what I described above, I just created 20 tees in two commands and with a third command, I trimmed them. If I want to scoot them, easy peazy. (selecting things in eplan is sort of clunky)

but here is one very important thing the dots/t_pieces cover two distinct processes that you have to do in Acade

• Visually show a connection
• Force the wire sequence so you don’t have to run the wire sequence command and go through every connection to force Acade to sequence your wires correctly and then write all that information back (note I seen reports of bugs on this command in this forum)
• I do not think I've ran into this wire sequencing problem. Maybe I draw in a way that keeps me from running into it. However, I also love how eplan ties into a database and how all things get their information from that database. Nothing ACE can do to compete with that unless they wanted to completely rewrite the software from the ground up. Which, they might be interested in doing if enough people actually used the software. Did I tell you that I have been the only person who uses ACE in my last 4 jobs. I think that means that I am the only person out of 20-25 Controls Engineers who enjoys working with automated tools. The rest of them prefer to use vanilla CAD or even worse, Draftsight. The problem is very much with the community.
  
  so if you take into account to make you project work properly you need to do both functions then you will find just by using the T-pieces you are actually faster than Acade that’s not including the 6 different ways that I can think of to screw up the wiring in Acade when drawing wires and connecting them
  Hmmm I am curious about this. Maybe I just draw in the sequence of how I want things ordered so I do not run into these problems? I do not know but maybe you are describing some of the times I've had something weird happen and could not explain it. 

• Eplan is built like many of the other German apps that I have used. The interface is extremely cluttered and it includes so much irrelevant functionality all at once.

Eplan has a far better front interface you can easily detach all the windows spread them over a dual screen close or open a toolbar create your own toolbars and save the set up if you don’t like the way its set up re configure the screen to what you like it’s that easy 

Ha! This one is funny. I am very quick at catching on to most user interfaces and if I did not have training on eplan, I'd be lost. My biggest pet peeve is that there were numerous times during training that I would open properties with a component and the instructor would say "make sure not to enter in anything here, or there, etc or you will screw it up. This component doesn't use this function..." Well why would they not grey it out!?

• wire numbering!

The wire numbering system is the best I’ve have ever seen it works several levels above what ACADE can offer

 you can have multiple different number formats saved in the project which will all number at the same time so you can have a numbering format for 3 phase supply that’s different from your 24vdc control which is different from say showing the PLC address on wire connected to the PLC card all in set up and numbering simultaneously

How would you achieve the same results in Acade?

Umm in the project settings ->wire numbers-> wire number options -> based on layer

And here is where it gets really smart because the number format also includes what Eplan calls the net configuration you can then define how each number format works as it goes through symbols i.e. does the number change or stay the same so in this case I can have 3 number formats which number wire numerically different from each other and behave completely differently as the wire numbers travel across the project ?

I see no difference between that and what I described above plus the way that terminals are numbered inside of the symbols in ACE. 

no need to have several different Terminal symbols in Eplan so one type transfers the wire number and the other dosent just a symbol for a teminal the number format net conficurtion dictates how the terminal works in regard to wire numbers

But you have to setup that net configuration everywhere correct?

? NFPA symbols?

Unlike Acade the symbol files are current and up to date somebody needs to tell those guys at Autodesk that the IEC 60617 symbol set was withdrawn a number of years ago

And yes NFPA Ghost and IEC symbols come as standard and if your really adventurous you can have up to 20 different symbol sets running in your project which all go through a much simpler and easier to use symbol navigator compared to Acade

• Eplan includes the ability to edit and change properties to components that do not use those properties. On top of that, if you do edit one of those parameters, you risk breaking the function. I hear people use the excuse that users should know what they are doing but I find that extremely counter-intuitive to great software design.

Ok this really is a load of misinformation

It is not misinformation. It is, here is a training class, here are the things people do what break things from working correctly. Instructor says he has no idea why something would be allowed because it would never be used in that way but they included the option to edit that part anyways. I forgot the details because it was involved but I look forward to any helpful hints you provide below. 

• Eplan symbols work fundamentally different from the way ACADE symbols work
  
• They live in a separate symbol file external to the Eplan project you can then modify the external symbol and it will automatically update all instances of that symbol without the need to run through a complex and time consuming block replacement routine
  I wasn't mentioning that. I meant like properties of the devices. I cannot remember all of the different attributes that you can change but you can screw up links so that text travels across components and things like that. 
• Eplan symbols have over a 1000 standard attributes and over 200 user defined attributes what’s fundamentally different here is you have visibility schemes set in the symbol
  
  this means when you open a symbol durring normal working you have a pull down menu which will then apply a visibility scheme this scheme is easily configurable and you can display any attribute apply size colour position and font information to each attribute so you can have multiple saved display formats inside you symbol. Yes, I am not certain about all of this but I am certain that I could edit something that I would never edit for that type of symbol. In my opinion, the option to view that attribute should not exist as it would only do harm. It implies that there is more to know when really, there isn't. 
  
• If you decide to modify a visibility scheme you can save it as a new scheme or as the old scheme and here’s another clever feature because if you save the scheme as previous Eplan will ask you if you want to apply this new scheme to all these symbols in a project and instantaneously changes all the symbols (no block swap function needed here) Oh wait, are you you are talking about visibility like the visibility for attributes on an ACAD block. Again, something that any database driven software will have advantage with over something like ACE. I do absolutely love the ability though. 
• Each default symbol out of the box has 8 variants 4 positional variants with the tag on the left hand side and 4 with the tag on the right when you insert the symbol just by pushing the tab key will rotate the symbol through the variants (now if ACADE could fix the bugs that don’t let dynamic blocks work in ACADE you could have the same functionality but hey it’s only been 10 years since Dynamic blocks were added to plain AutoCAD give it another 10 years and they might actually do something about it)
• Yeahhhhhh I love this about eplan as well and REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY wish ACE could fix the stuff with dynamic blocks. I just started getting into making them so I am just going to start learning about what doesn't work with ACE. Which is unfortunate.
  
  but on reflectintion with the current naming convention you wont be able to do that in Acade as you have vertical and horizontal formatted symbols. But they rotate themselves if they are not in alignment with a wire that they are being placed on so the whole H vs V really only comes in handy for having the attributes in a easily readable location and rotation. 
• Herse a good one because the default symbol libraries have been very cleverly set up between the standards the same symbol has the same Eplan name which means you can just go into settings swap the NFPA library for the Ghost library and all symbols in your project will change to the new standard
  You'll have to send me an inbox and explain this better to me. I am interested.
• You can’t break the function on a symbol that’s unless you do something like this go to the editing menu explode the symbol and then ungroup the elements in the exploded symbol which basically means you’re trying to apply Autocad logic to a Eplan system or in simpler terms your trying to apply baseball rules to Cricket they both have a bat and a ball and 2 teams and that’s where the it ends
  
  
• Now if you trying to explode an ACADE block modify it for that page then block it again then what I personally have got to say about that is that’s bad engineering practice you should always create your own symbol correctly the reasons why are as follows. NO NEED TO PREACH THIS TO ME. TRUST ME!!! I CANNOT SPEAK FOR EVERYONE ELSE THOUGH. IT AMAZES ME THAT I WORK WITH PEOPLE WHO AUTOMATE MACHINERY FOR A LIVING YET THEY BRUTE FORCE ALL OF THE WORK THEY DO TO GET THE MACHINE AUTOMATED.  
  1. You drive consistency through your projects by selecting symbols rather than modifying symbols continuously
  2. You won’t run into issues if your trying to do a project wide block swap and here is what happened to me I was handed an Acade project to modify the VSD symbols needed modifying so I modified first VSD symbol when I did the project wide block swap I then found out that the previous engineer had been lazy and modified the same block into 4 different VSD’s which totally trashed my project and it took me most of the day to recover (unlike Eplan where the undo command will work at this level)  I cannot describe my frustration with practices like this to accurately present the magnitude of how strongly I feel about things like this. I am a programmer as well and people who program PLCs program like they know nothing about programming. Similar stuff but with much bigger consequences. 
• Eplan has a Black box function where you create a box drop normal symbols into the box and Eplan then now knows not to look at the individual symbols but treat it as a custom symbol (no function exists in any shape or form in Acade for this)

FINALLY, I have replied to your post. (i'll have to compare with you in private message to see what else there is to respond to). I'm going to be a couple of hours late to work but I replied! ha. Tonight will be a late night for me.

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[controlsgirl]

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@ccad2509 wrote:

Hello Controls girl

I do enjoy these Eplan myths same stuff keeps appearing yet nobody comes up with an original issue it seems that the problem here is people are trying to apply Autocad logic to Eplan and then assume it doesn’t work the Autocad way then you can’t do it

I will send you a private message detailing the rest of your comments as its pretty big

• It is MUCH faster to draw in ACE. I can create a ladder, add rungs, add devices, remove wires, add wires...much faster that is possible with Eplan (unless a macro is created for an entire circuit).

This doesn’t make much sense the ladders just work maybe you had the wrong drawing template set (Eplan has hundreds of pre-set templates and forms straight out of the box)

Ladders work similarly but you have to add wire tees everywhere. There also isn't the flexibility with scoot, wire trim, add rung, etc (and it is esp slow because I do not know of any existing keyboard commands in eplan for these edit tools. If you use your mouse a lot in ACAD, I suggest learning/creating some aliases. Then set your right mouse button to enter. Use your left hand for command calling and the spacebar and right click as enter. Set the right click button to be enter while in all other modes. I like the time sensitive right-click.

However, It does make sense because in ACE you do not have to add a symbol and determine what version of it that you want to use for each and every insert for a wire tee. ACE is smart enough to know that there is a tee there and if you want to change the shape, you can do so later. It makes it extremely fast when throwing components in the space and then linking them together, not just in rungs but in any weird way. 

You can use the cont. c cont. v keyboard commands to copy symbols and it will number the symbols automatically on pasting into your page

try that with ACADE 2012 and see how far you get!!!

I'm confused at what you are getting at with this. Ever use the command AECOPYCOMP?

Or just press the inset button to launch the symbol explorer or RHS mouse button

I do not want to have to press any button to insert a wire tee! I do not want to have to deal with another component. I want it to be a passive symbol that knows where it belongs and knows when it doesn't belong as I trim wires or delete components. 

Just use the delete button to remove any wires add wires well you don’t even need to think about that one if a two symbols are in the horizontal or vertical plain and the connection points are aligned then the symbol will automatically connect

That is great, but you have to add wire tees everywhere. 

 if you don’t want them to connect those two devices just use Cntrl Shift U and it will remove the line

There is even the smart connect command where you can drag part of the circuit out of horizontal or vertical alignment and Eplan will add all the bends automatically to create the modified circuit (no function in Acade for that command)

Yes but again, you have to have placed wire tees in all of the appropriate places. I find that AESCOOT is efficient enough or using the AE copy/move circuit. 

And here’s a really good tip if you use the copy and paste command go to another page paste the information into the page just by pressing X will align the information in the x axis as per the original information and pressing Y will then align in the Y axis far better than creating a saved circuit then re inserting the saved circuit and then aligning the circuit which are the 3 distinct steps you need to take in Acade to achieve the same results

Simple and effective

In this case, I do not use the save circuit. I just use CTRL+SHIFT+C (copy with basepoint) and then I do a retag. I would love to see ACE make the copy circuit work across drawings. I like the alignment option in eplan but it doesn't add much to using copy with basepoint in ACE. 

And as for macros that’s the tip of the iceberg let’s just say the Acade circuit builder is a bad attempt to copy this functionality whereas the EPLAN macros an average user can programme it not like with circuit builder where you need to be able to programme in LISP to get it to work (see various failed attempts to do this on this forum)

I'm confused at what you mean with the macro and symbolbuilder+lisp. Using the symbol builder is a learning curve but once you know naming conventions and you use the correct attributes things go fairly smoothly. This reminds me of another VERY basic thing that eplan cannot do. 

• component link lines!?

• There is no command line in ePlan, which BLOWS. Use your left hand for keyboard commands and configure your right mouse click to be "enter" and watch how much faster you can work.

Why would you want a command line there is over 70 shortcut commands on the keyboard that some even do 2/3/4 equivalent ACADE commands in one keystroke

I have not learned the shortcut commands in eplan but I asked about many of them and the trainer wasn't so familiar. (the trainer was the NA trainer employed by eplan.) Anywho, with ACAD I can keep so many of my keyboard commands to one and two letter combos that I use with my left hand only. Right hand on the mouse.

You can set up custom toolbars far easier than you can do editing and creating a profile in ACADE
I can setup custom toolbars in eplan or in ACADE far easier than editing and creating a profiel in ACADE? I do not have to create an entire profile. I have my set of aliases. I dock my properties to the right and my project to the left. How much more custom do I need? I would love it if ACE made it much easier to be able to migrate all of the changes I made to the interface. 

• Wire dots automatically appear. I just think of all the extra time that I would have to spend adding stupid wire tee components. 

Ok not quite sure what you’re talking about here

 Wire tees, the annoying little things that you have to add in eplan everywhere in order for it to connect all of the wires. 

Actually they don’t just appear you have to use a command to draw a wire from a device to another wire/device which may include a number of shortcuts to get the connection to connect correctly

If the components are between two ladder rails, I just use AEADDRUNG and it connects all of them in a line like eplan. However, If I add a ladder and a bunch of rungs and then draw a wire straight down, it'll connect them all and then I can just trim (with fence). All wire connections are there. No inserting components. Maybe I'll make a short video of this. 

How is that any faster than just going to the toolbar selecting a t-piece and then dropping it into a circuit where it will auto connect (also there is the keyboard short cuts so you can be lazy and not even move your mouse to the connection toolbar)

In what I described above, I just created 20 tees in two commands and with a third command, I trimmed them. If I want to scoot them, easy peazy. (selecting things in eplan is sort of clunky)

but here is one very important thing the dots/t_pieces cover two distinct processes that you have to do in Acade

• Visually show a connection
• Force the wire sequence so you don’t have to run the wire sequence command and go through every connection to force Acade to sequence your wires correctly and then write all that information back (note I seen reports of bugs on this command in this forum)
• I do not think I've ran into this wire sequencing problem. Maybe I draw in a way that keeps me from running into it. However, I also love how eplan ties into a database and how all things get their information from that database. Nothing ACE can do to compete with that unless they wanted to completely rewrite the software from the ground up. Which, they might be interested in doing if enough people actually used the software. Did I tell you that I have been the only person who uses ACE in my last 4 jobs. I think that means that I am the only person out of 20-25 Controls Engineers who enjoys working with automated tools. The rest of them prefer to use vanilla CAD or even worse, Draftsight. The problem is very much with the community.
  
  so if you take into account to make you project work properly you need to do both functions then you will find just by using the T-pieces you are actually faster than Acade that’s not including the 6 different ways that I can think of to screw up the wiring in Acade when drawing wires and connecting them
  Hmmm I am curious about this. Maybe I just draw in the sequence of how I want things ordered so I do not run into these problems? I do not know but maybe you are describing some of the times I've had something weird happen and could not explain it. 

• Eplan is built like many of the other German apps that I have used. The interface is extremely cluttered and it includes so much irrelevant functionality all at once.

Eplan has a far better front interface you can easily detach all the windows spread them over a dual screen close or open a toolbar create your own toolbars and save the set up if you don’t like the way its set up re configure the screen to what you like it’s that easy 

Ha! This one is funny. I am very quick at catching on to most user interfaces and if I did not have training on eplan, I'd be lost. My biggest pet peeve is that there were numerous times during training that I would open properties with a component and the instructor would say "make sure not to enter in anything here, or there, etc or you will screw it up. This component doesn't use this function..." Well why would they not grey it out!?

• wire numbering!

The wire numbering system is the best I’ve have ever seen it works several levels above what ACADE can offer

 you can have multiple different number formats saved in the project which will all number at the same time so you can have a numbering format for 3 phase supply that’s different from your 24vdc control which is different from say showing the PLC address on wire connected to the PLC card all in set up and numbering simultaneously

How would you achieve the same results in Acade?

Umm in the project settings ->wire numbers-> wire number options -> based on layer

And here is where it gets really smart because the number format also includes what Eplan calls the net configuration you can then define how each number format works as it goes through symbols i.e. does the number change or stay the same so in this case I can have 3 number formats which number wire numerically different from each other and behave completely differently as the wire numbers travel across the project ?

I see no difference between that and what I described above plus the way that terminals are numbered inside of the symbols in ACE. 

no need to have several different Terminal symbols in Eplan so one type transfers the wire number and the other dosent just a symbol for a teminal the number format net conficurtion dictates how the terminal works in regard to wire numbers

But you have to setup that net configuration everywhere correct?

? NFPA symbols?

Unlike Acade the symbol files are current and up to date somebody needs to tell those guys at Autodesk that the IEC 60617 symbol set was withdrawn a number of years ago

And yes NFPA Ghost and IEC symbols come as standard and if your really adventurous you can have up to 20 different symbol sets running in your project which all go through a much simpler and easier to use symbol navigator compared to Acade

• Eplan includes the ability to edit and change properties to components that do not use those properties. On top of that, if you do edit one of those parameters, you risk breaking the function. I hear people use the excuse that users should know what they are doing but I find that extremely counter-intuitive to great software design.

Ok this really is a load of misinformation

It is not misinformation. It is, here is a training class, here are the things people do what break things from working correctly. Instructor says he has no idea why something would be allowed because it would never be used in that way but they included the option to edit that part anyways. I forgot the details because it was involved but I look forward to any helpful hints you provide below. 

• Eplan symbols work fundamentally different from the way ACADE symbols work
  
• They live in a separate symbol file external to the Eplan project you can then modify the external symbol and it will automatically update all instances of that symbol without the need to run through a complex and time consuming block replacement routine
  I wasn't mentioning that. I meant like properties of the devices. I cannot remember all of the different attributes that you can change but you can screw up links so that text travels across components and things like that. 
• Eplan symbols have over a 1000 standard attributes and over 200 user defined attributes what’s fundamentally different here is you have visibility schemes set in the symbol
  
  this means when you open a symbol durring normal working you have a pull down menu which will then apply a visibility scheme this scheme is easily configurable and you can display any attribute apply size colour position and font information to each attribute so you can have multiple saved display formats inside you symbol. Yes, I am not certain about all of this but I am certain that I could edit something that I would never edit for that type of symbol. In my opinion, the option to view that attribute should not exist as it would only do harm. It implies that there is more to know when really, there isn't. 
  
• If you decide to modify a visibility scheme you can save it as a new scheme or as the old scheme and here’s another clever feature because if you save the scheme as previous Eplan will ask you if you want to apply this new scheme to all these symbols in a project and instantaneously changes all the symbols (no block swap function needed here) Oh wait, are you you are talking about visibility like the visibility for attributes on an ACAD block. Again, something that any database driven software will have advantage with over something like ACE. I do absolutely love the ability though. 
• Each default symbol out of the box has 8 variants 4 positional variants with the tag on the left hand side and 4 with the tag on the right when you insert the symbol just by pushing the tab key will rotate the symbol through the variants (now if ACADE could fix the bugs that don’t let dynamic blocks work in ACADE you could have the same functionality but hey it’s only been 10 years since Dynamic blocks were added to plain AutoCAD give it another 10 years and they might actually do something about it)
• Yeahhhhhh I love this about eplan as well and REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY wish ACE could fix the stuff with dynamic blocks. I just started getting into making them so I am just going to start learning about what doesn't work with ACE. Which is unfortunate.
  
  but on reflectintion with the current naming convention you wont be able to do that in Acade as you have vertical and horizontal formatted symbols. But they rotate themselves if they are not in alignment with a wire that they are being placed on so the whole H vs V really only comes in handy for having the attributes in a easily readable location and rotation. 
• Herse a good one because the default symbol libraries have been very cleverly set up between the standards the same symbol has the same Eplan name which means you can just go into settings swap the NFPA library for the Ghost library and all symbols in your project will change to the new standard
  You'll have to send me an inbox and explain this better to me. I am interested.
• You can’t break the function on a symbol that’s unless you do something like this go to the editing menu explode the symbol and then ungroup the elements in the exploded symbol which basically means you’re trying to apply Autocad logic to a Eplan system or in simpler terms your trying to apply baseball rules to Cricket they both have a bat and a ball and 2 teams and that’s where the it ends
  
  
• Now if you trying to explode an ACADE block modify it for that page then block it again then what I personally have got to say about that is that’s bad engineering practice you should always create your own symbol correctly the reasons why are as follows. NO NEED TO PREACH THIS TO ME. TRUST ME!!! I CANNOT SPEAK FOR EVERYONE ELSE THOUGH. IT AMAZES ME THAT I WORK WITH PEOPLE WHO AUTOMATE MACHINERY FOR A LIVING YET THEY BRUTE FORCE ALL OF THE WORK THEY DO TO GET THE MACHINE AUTOMATED.  
  1. You drive consistency through your projects by selecting symbols rather than modifying symbols continuously
  2. You won’t run into issues if your trying to do a project wide block swap and here is what happened to me I was handed an Acade project to modify the VSD symbols needed modifying so I modified first VSD symbol when I did the project wide block swap I then found out that the previous engineer had been lazy and modified the same block into 4 different VSD’s which totally trashed my project and it took me most of the day to recover (unlike Eplan where the undo command will work at this level)  I cannot describe my frustration with practices like this to accurately present the magnitude of how strongly I feel about things like this. I am a programmer as well and people who program PLCs program like they know nothing about programming. Similar stuff but with much bigger consequences. 
• Eplan has a Black box function where you create a box drop normal symbols into the box and Eplan then now knows not to look at the individual symbols but treat it as a custom symbol (no function exists in any shape or form in Acade for this)

FINALLY, I have replied to your post. (i'll have to compare with you in private message to see what else there is to respond to). I'm going to be a couple of hours late to work but I replied! ha. Tonight will be a late night for me.

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[ccad2509]

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Hello Controls girl been on the beach drinking drinks with mixed fruit and little umbrellas in for the past 3 weeks

Ok let’s break down the paragraph below

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Ladders work similarly but you have to add wire tees everywhere. There also isn't the flexibility with scoot, wire trim, add rung, etc (and it is esp slow because I do not know of any existing keyboard commands in eplan for these edit tools.

You’re complaining Eplan is slow and in the same sentence you admit that you don’t know the commands you are supposed to be using don’t you see the issue here ?

If you use your mouse a lot in ACAD, I suggest learning/creating some aliases. Then set your right mouse button to enter. Use your left hand for command calling and the spacebar and right click as enter. Set the right click button to be enter while in all other modes. I like the time sensitive right-click.

Again you’re trying to use AutoCAD logic on what you find comfortable and wanting to make Eplan work and feel like ACADE If you want to program keyboard shortcuts there a whole section in how to do that in the help files  

However, It does make sense because in ACE you do not have to add a symbol and determine what version of it that you want to use for each and every insert for a wire tee. ACE is smart enough to know that there is a tee there and if you want to change the shape, you can do so later.

No ACADE is dumb very dumb the circular dot only conveys a connection it doesn’t convey current flow like a t-Piece and it doesn’t convey any information on how you want the wireman to build the panel it’s there in the T-piece

 You’re now in a position where you need to add further information at a later date to convey this information

It makes it extremely fast when throwing components in the space and then linking them together, not just in rungs but in any weird way.

What you probably don’t realize yet is with Eplan symbols the inserting point is dead center so they easily align in the x or y axis ever noticed some symbols in ACADE have the insertion point in different places so you can’t align symbols of different types?

You don’t need a scoot equivalent you just window and drag the T-piece or use the shortcut command “V” for a more accurate movement

 You’re blindly forgetting that the T-piece covers two distinctive functions you must do in ACADE which is

1 Show the connection

2 Route the wire connections in the correct sorting order so you’re wiring diagrams will create correctly

Once you accept that then you realize you’re wasting time because the functionality of ACADE is clunky in this case  

You can use the cont. c cont. v keyboard commands to copy symbols and it will number the symbols automatically on pasting into your page

try that with ACADE 2012 and see how far you get!!!

I'm confused at what you are getting at with this. Ever use the command AECOPYCOMP?

It’s very simple you can use windows functions naturally in Eplan Cntl C / Cntrl V and it works correctly

In ACADE 2012 you can’t do that you got unpredictable results (I think they finally got a fix going in 2015)

Or just press the inset button to launch the symbol explorer or RHS mouse button

I do not want to have to press any button to insert a wire tee! I do not want to have to deal with another component. I want it to be a passive symbol that knows where it belongs and knows when it doesn't belong as I trim wires or delete components. 

But you’re missing an important point you don’t have a wire trim command in Eplan because it’s not required

Connection points join automatically your complaining about the T-piece and how much extra work it takes but your ignoring the fact that you don’t require to use the trim command so the wire shortening to an intersecting wire then creates a dot connection is actually extra work in ACADE compared with Eplan

So you prepared to completely dismiss a design package because one function doesn’t work the way you want it to if you put time and effort into it you will eventually realize that it’s a better faster way of doing things

Just use the delete button to remove any wires add wires well you don’t even need to think about that one if a two symbols are in the horizontal or vertical plain and the connection points are aligned then the symbol will automatically connect

That is great, but you have to add wire tees everywhere. 

 Still fixated on a single none issue

 if you don’t want them to connect those two devices just use Cntrl Shift U and it will remove the line

There is even the smart connect command where you can drag part of the circuit out of horizontal or vertical alignment and Eplan will add all the bends automatically to create the modified circuit (no function in Acade for that command)

Yes but again, you have to have placed wire tees in all of the appropriate places. I find that AESCOOT is efficient enough or using the AE copy/move circuit. 

No you wrong here scoot doesn’t work like smart connect you just window and drag the circuit all in one go and move it in the x and y axis simultaneously

With ACADE solution you would need to scoot a complex circuit multiple times in the x axis then do the same for the y axis to achieve the same effect you do in one move in Eplan

And here’s a really good tip if you use the copy and paste command go to another page paste the information into the page just by pressing X will align the information in the x axis as per the original information and pressing Y will then align in the Y axis far better than creating a saved circuit then re inserting the saved circuit and then aligning the circuit which are the 3 distinct steps you need to take in Acade to achieve the same results

Simple and effective

In this case, I do not use the save circuit. I just use CTRL+SHIFT+C (copy with basepoint) and then I do a retag. I would love to see ACE make the copy circuit work across drawings. I like the alignment option in eplan but it doesn't add much to using copy with basepoint in ACE. 

 Oh boy yes it does your basic premise through most of this discussions is you can do things faster in ACADE

Well this really speeds up the copy and paste process I don’t need to define a base point and I have the flexibility of changing the inserted circuit in the x or y axis

I don’t even need to think to hard window the Circuit type Cntrl C, Cntrl V, X, Y and it’s in exactly the same place as the previous circuit

It’s all about these keyboard shortcuts you love

And why don’t you use the save circuit command? Maybe because it’s far too long and complicated?

In Eplan F10 with start the page macro process or window and LHS Mouse Button Starts the simple window macro process

And here’s a cleaver feature you can create a project where you store all your window and page macros and keep them all together where you can do some clever housekeeping esit and modify your macros and re create them

(There is no feature in existence that looks after blocks in a similar way in ACADE)

And as for macros that’s the tip of the iceberg let’s just say the Acade circuit builder is a bad attempt to copy this functionality whereas the EPLAN macros an average user can programme it not like with circuit builder where you need to be able to programme in LISP to get it to work (see various failed attempts to do this on this forum)

I'm confused at what you mean with the macro and symbolbuilder+lisp. Using the symbol builder is a learning curve but once you know naming conventions and you use the correct attributes things go fairly smoothly. This reminds me of another VERY basic thing that eplan cannot do. 

You just don’t get it

To use the Circuit builder (not symbol builder) you need to be very competent at lisp programming to make it work and if you troll through the forum here there is multiple instances where competent lisp programmers can’t make the Circuit builder work!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Which reminds me does symbol builder still throw up errors when you try to design a symbol with only an incoming connection or do we use the ignore error message command again!!!!

I have no knowledge in programming but here’s the very important point

I can configure Eplan macros to do things that these lisp programmers using circuit builder can’t even conceptualize yet

• component link lines!?

Oh dear why have link lines in the IEC format you don’t need them the assumption is anything to the RHS of a tagged device is part of the same device (and that’s how Eplan is far smarter than ACADE)

You only need to tag the first terminal in a terminal block with a terminal block number and any terminal to the left of it is part of that block

If you want to play the game of what Eplan can’t do in the NFPA standard I can play the Game of what ACADE can’t do to comply with IEC standards (still looking for the day when ACADE implement “= =” AND “++” as IEC codes but then again it’s only been about 10 years since these were added into the IEC standard) and believe me for every incidence you can find I can find at least 5 where ACADE is deficient in the IEC standard

 There is no command line in ePlan, which BLOWS. Use your left hand for keyboard commands and configure your right mouse click to be "enter" and watch how much faster you can work.

Why would you want a command line there is over 70 shortcut commands on the keyboard that some even do 2/3/4 equivalent ACADE commands in one keystroke

I have not learned the shortcut commands in eplan but I asked about many of them and the trainer wasn't so familiar. (the trainer was the NA trainer employed by eplan.) Anywho, with ACAD I can keep so many of my keyboard commands to one and two letter combos that I use with my left hand only. Right hand on the mouse.

Well if you even bother to check the help files and type “shortcut keys” you will find everything you need to know

Better still spend some quality time working your way through the help files and then tell me which is the better documented product !!!!!!!

You can set up custom toolbars far easier than you can do editing and creating a profile in ACADE
I can setup custom toolbars in eplan or in ACADE far easier than editing and creating a profiel in ACADE? I do not have to create an entire profile. I have my set of aliases. I dock my properties to the right and my project to the left. How much more custom do I need? I would love it if ACE made it much easier to be able to migrate all of the changes I made to the interface. 

 Bit of a none answer there you didn’t address the nightmare of creating a profile in ACADE or plain AutoCAD against the simple method of creating a profile in Eplan

• Wire dots automatically appear. I just think of all the extra time that I would have to spend adding stupid wire tee components. 

Ok not quite sure what you’re talking about here

 Wire tees, the annoying little things that you have to add in eplan everywhere in order for it to connect all of the wires. 

 You are really annoyed with this function

There are 3 basic things that annoy me about ACADE and two of them cripple the ability ACADE to be an engineering tool in Europe

1. I constantly trip up ACADE because it can’t work as fast as I type where as in Eplan it just works I don’t have to wait while ACADE decides to interrogate the database make a decision then eventually pass back the relevant information from the database and then do something!!!!
2. Reports are a BOS ( bag of S$%^) its truly terrible way of generating reports you can’t define a proper template (and what I mean is a block with lines arcs and circles attributes plus jpegs)it’s based on the AutoCAD mechanical Table function and its rubbish, here in Europe there are a few standard report formats that have been around forever(originally in paper format) all the competing ECAD products have these forms as templates yet ACADE doesn’t, it’s been an Idea in the ideas station from the beginning I know I posted it with quite a few votes but obviously the guys at Autodesk can’t see the monetary gain in doing this (BTW I can do it it’s not that difficult) which reminds me have they cleared the bug in the reports yet where installation/location codes cause errors in the display of the reports it’s only been there from the start
3. Sliced PLC I/O again 50% of all controls companies here in Europe use this method to display PLC connections ACADE can’t do that so immediately 50% of potential sales are gone because of this issue

 Actually they don’t just appear you have to use a command to draw a wire from a device to another wire/device which may include a number of shortcuts to get the connection to connect correctly

If the components are between two ladder rails, I just use AEADDRUNG and it connects all of them in a line like eplan. However, If I add a ladder and a bunch of rungs and then draw a wire straight down, it'll connect them all and then I can just trim (with fence). All wire connections are there. No inserting components. Maybe I'll make a short video of this. 

 Oops again your trying to equate what you do with ACADE and transfer that logic to Eplan

All you need to do is insert one T-piece and keep the mouse button depressed you can the drag along the  x  or y axis and it will continue to drop t pieces where it see a device to connect to

 much faster the cutting inserting and trimming

And as to adding a complete rung that can be easily achieved using a macro and linking that macro to a keyboard shortcut or toolbar button

Or you can use Cntl C and Cntl V to copy and pastes a rung

How is that any faster than just going to the toolbar selecting a t-piece and then dropping it into a circuit where it will auto connect (also there is the keyboard short cuts so you can be lazy and not even move your mouse to the connection toolbar)

In what I described above, I just created 20 tees in two commands and with a third command, I trimmed them. If I want to scoot them, easy peazy. (selecting things in eplan is sort of clunky)

Ill refer you to my previous response

but here is one very important thing the dots/t_pieces cover two distinct processes that you have to do in Acade

• Visually show a connection
• Force the wire sequence so you don’t have to run the wire sequence command and go through every connection to force Acade to sequence your wires correctly and then write all that information back (note I seen reports of bugs on this command in this forum)
• I do not think I've ran into this wire sequencing problem. Maybe I draw in a way that keeps me from running into it. However, I also love how eplan ties into a database and how all things get their information from that database. Nothing ACE can do to compete with that unless they wanted to completely rewrite the software from the ground up. Which, they might be interested in doing if enough people actually used the software. Did I tell you that I have been the only person who uses ACE in my last 4 jobs. I think that means that I am the only person out of 20-25 Controls Engineers who enjoys working with automated tools. The rest of them prefer to use vanilla CAD or even worse, Draftsight. The problem is very much with the community.
  
  

  You must be lucky that all you reports you generate are correct because there is numerous postings regarding how this does or does not work

  You’ve answered my question here inadvertently the way you think about vanilla AutoCAD and how superior you feel with ACADE is the way I feel about ACADE and Eplan with ACADE being the vanilla cad product
  
  

  There is a rumor which is has been floating around for some time which says Autodesk started to rewrite ACADE from the ground up and it was abandoned
  
  so if you take into account to make you project work properly you need to do both functions then you will find just by using the T-pieces you are actually faster than Acade that’s not including the 6 different ways that I can think of to screw up the wiring in Acade when drawing wires and connecting them
  Hmmm I am curious about this. Maybe I just draw in the sequence of how I want things ordered so I do not run into these problems? I do not know but maybe you are describing some of the times I've had something weird happen and could not explain it. 

Let’s count the ways

1. wire not touching a symbol but looks connected
2. symbol not sitting on the grid wire sitting on the grid or vice versa
3. wire actually not on a defined wire layer
4. two wires on top of each other one shorter than the other (this used to be quite common where ACADE gets confused when it scooted symbols it forgot to delete the previous line connection and overwrite the connecting line with a new one)
5. break in the wire
6. incoming and outgoing arrows cross references not up to date (Eplan does that automatically)
7. fan in fan out not correctly configured (this function is without doubt the worst piece of workflow implementation going it’s a shining example on how not to do it)

• Eplan is built like many of the other German apps that I have used. The interface is extremely cluttered and it includes so much irrelevant functionality all at once.

Eplan has a far better front interface you can easily detach all the windows spread them over a dual screen close or open a toolbar create your own toolbars and save the set up if you don’t like the way its set up re configure the screen to what you like it’s that easy 

Ha! This one is funny. I am very quick at catching on to most user interfaces and if I did not have training on eplan, I'd be lost. My biggest pet peeve is that there were numerous times during training that I would open properties with a component and the instructor would say "make sure not to enter in anything here, or there, etc or you will screw it up. This component doesn't use this function..." Well why would they not grey it out!?

Wait a minute your off the question here we are talking about the front interface and now you’re talking about properties

If I was you I would get your money back this trainer you keep referring to as you Americans say “SUCKS!!!!”

• wire numbering!

The wire numbering system is the best I’ve have ever seen it works several levels above what ACADE can offer

 you can have multiple different number formats saved in the project which will all number at the same time so you can have a numbering format for 3 phase supply that’s different from your 24vdc control which is different from say showing the PLC address on wire connected to the PLC card all in set up and numbering simultaneously

How would you achieve the same results in Acade?

Umm in the project settings ->wire numbers-> wire number options -> based on layer

Are you sure about that

Can the wire layer 1 have one number format say Page/Colum/unique number?

And another layer 2 for 3 Phase be based on Page /L/Unique number

And another Layer 3 for PLC Connections which is based on Rack number/slot no/ channel number

And here’s the kicker when you number the project you just use the wire number command once?

And as another nail in the coffin when you number the project a window pops up which displays the previous connections and the new connections side by side you can manually edit the whole project from this one window and as part of the standard functionality of Eplan you can even copy the information paste it into excel and manipulate the data from there and paste it back into Eplan

(And another little thing here once your set the wire number format you can export that format out of your project and import into another)

 And here is where it gets really smart because the number format also includes what Eplan calls the net configuration you can then define how each number format works as it goes through symbols i.e. does the number change or stay the same so in this case I can have 3 number formats which number wire numerically different from each other and behave completely differently as the wire numbers travel across the project ?

I see no difference between that and what I described above plus the way that terminals are numbered inside of the symbols in ACE. 

But what about changing the way the number sequence behaves you now have to go swap out all your terminals to another type where as you just edit the net configuration inside the number format function ?

You can set up numbering behavior based around client specific number requirements very easily

You can then just copy and paste drawings from other projects apply the numbering format and you’re done

Your method would require copying pages from various projects checking which symbols have been used and then swapping out symbols that don’t conform to the numbering format you need  

no need to have several different Terminal symbols in Eplan so one type transfers the wire number and the other dosent just a symbol for a teminal the number format net conficurtion dictates how the terminal works in regard to wire numbers

But you have to setup that net configuration everywhere correct?

The network configuration is a project wide setting so just by editing this information once you can completely change the behavior of how wire numbers react as they pass through symbols

There is also a series of default network configurations already in Eplan you just copy one and modify or create from scratch

Something Eplan is very good at is having lots of templates in that can be installed into the default installation

And when it gets back to parts well you already know ACADE is the worst for parts it doesn’t even make the top 5 nowadays for parts

? NFPA symbols?

Unlike Acade the symbol files are current and up to date somebody needs to tell those guys at Autodesk that the IEC 60617 symbol set was withdrawn a number of years ago

And yes NFPA Ghost and IEC symbols come as standard and if your really adventurous you can have up to 20 different symbol sets running in your project which all go through a much simpler and easier to use symbol navigator compared to Acade

• Eplan includes the ability to edit and change properties to components that do not use those properties. On top of that, if you do edit one of those parameters, you risk breaking the function. I hear people use the excuse that users should know what they are doing but I find that extremely counter-intuitive to great software design.

Ok this really is a load of misinformation

It is not misinformation. It is, here is a training class, here are the things people do what break things from working correctly. Instructor says he has no idea why something would be allowed because it would never be used in that way but they included the option to edit that part anyways. I forgot the details because it was involved but I look forward to any helpful hints you provide below. 

What a load of rubbish this trainer clearly doesn’t know what he is talking about

If you do something that Eplan doesn’t like it generates an error message which just by pressing “F1” will launch the help file with a full description of the error and how to clear the error correctly!!!!!!!!!

Try clearing error message in ACADE without using the ignore message function

(another one of my gripes about ACADE why have messages you can’t clear them in the normal use of the product either the message is false and should be coded out or the message is true and you must have a legitimate method or addressing it without frigging the system it’s pretty obvious the messages can’t be coded out and there is no solution that’s why the

CRAPPY IGNORE MESSAGE FUNCTION IS SUCH A FUNDEMENTALY BAD THING

There is no breaking symbols it’s a load of BS from your trainer  

• Eplan symbols work fundamentally different from the way ACADE symbols work
  
• They live in a separate symbol file external to the Eplan project you can then modify the external symbol and it will automatically update all instances of that symbol without the need to run through a complex and time consuming block replacement routine
  I wasn't mentioning that. I meant like properties of the devices. I cannot remember all of the different attributes that you can change but you can screw up links so that text travels across components and things like that. 
• Eplan symbols have over a 1000 standard attributes and over 200 user defined attributes what’s fundamentally different here is you have visibility schemes set in the symbol
  
  this means when you open a symbol durring normal working you have a pull down menu which will then apply a visibility scheme this scheme is easily configurable and you can display any attribute apply size colour position and font information to each attribute so you can have multiple saved display formats inside you symbol. Yes, I am not certain about all of this but I am certain that I could edit something that I would never edit for that type of symbol. In my opinion, the option to view that attribute should not exist as it would only do harm. It implies that there is more to know when really, there isn't. 

  
  You’re applying AutoCAD logic again here and missing the fundamentals

  The symbol has a default visibility setting where the attributes have visibility states positional information and formatting

  Now for example you want to change the position of the tag or move the cross-reference you can do that and save it as a visibility scheme

  The key here is that your driving standardization of visibility if you wanted to achieve the same in ACADE you would be creating multiple symbols of the same type with the attributes mapped to different positions and visibility states

  And we both know what will really happen the ACADE editor will use the various attribute editing functions just to change the symbol formatting which will not be documented/saved in any shape or form for later reuse which in the end will cause presentation inconsistences throughout the project

  In certain conditions different visibility schemes can be applied here’s one recently

  Pilz safety relay one colleague wants the relay contact image beside the coil and I usually put the contact image in the standard position at the bottom of the page here two visibility scheme can be created

If you decide to modify a visibility scheme you can save it as a new scheme or as the old scheme and here’s another clever feature because if you save the scheme as previous Eplan will ask you if you want to apply this new scheme to all these symbols in a project and instantaneously changes all the symbols (no block swap function needed here)

 Oh wait, are you you are talking about visibility like the visibility for attributes on an ACAD block. Again, something that any database driven software will have advantage with over something like ACE. I do absolutely love the ability though.

Your stating to get it but ACADE can’t do it you would need the ability in the symbol to remember various positions and have the ability to move attributes and change their settings

Wait a minute there is a partial solution you can do with plain AutoCAD and dynamic blocks it’s a pity dynamic blocks don’t work properly in ACADE 

And now some food for thought I’m playing with the 3D panel module at the moment and here’s something to make you jealous

1. its dirt easy to use
2. you don’t need to learn a load of 3d modelling functions to get productive
3. it has very clever functionality where you can define clash zones/thermal zones
4. it knows how to mount devices onto din rail at the correct height automatically
5. writes back into Rittal Therm so you can complete your thermal calculations
6. easily imports step files and through some simple wizards make the models Eplan compliant
7. has a brilliant auto wiring function where you define a wire type and what sort of trucking it can route through (wire segregation)
8. simple to use manual wire/cable routing tool
9. automatic fill levels on trunking it works out how much space is in the trunking and tells you whether your approaching or exceeding the fill levels you defined in the project
10. Calculates the length of wire/cable taking into account bend radius and you define a wire stripping length and extra length addition (which can be a % or absolute value)
11. It will generate an error if the wire is too small or too large connecting to a device
12. You can define different connection details to each end of a wire one could be a ring crimp the other could be a ferrule!!!!
13. Oh here’s a good one it totalizes all the wire types used automatically
14. Writes data directly into a CNC machine / Wire Cutting machine/ Label Machine

Good luck on spending the next 6 months to a year learning inventor before you can do a proper 3D model of an electrical control panel (Autodesk Note this is why the way you implement ACADE and Inventor will eventually fail forcing electrical engineers to learn inventor is not going to happen on any level)

[Anonymous]

Autocad electical in comparison to the purpose built electrical packages (ePlan, WScad, elecworks) is in my opinion on life support or dead in the water I base on this on how anemic the 2018 update was, the good ideas that were only partially implemented (using SQL server for some databases but not others like the PLC database, 3D cad link,and poorly done vault integration), and the Catalog that was last updated in 2015. 

At this point if Autodesk want to complete with the others they either have to commit to a major rework of autocad electrical, licence another company's software like solidworks has done, or design a new program from scratch.

The only reason I have not voted with my wallet is that my current company committed to a 3 year product design suite subscription before I started working here.

[controlsgirl]

I had spent a VERY long time replying to this. I only got about a quarter of the way through....and then I lost it all. There are a couple of things that you keep accusing me of that are simply misunderstandings on your part. I am going to make a couple more general statements just so that all of the time I spent was not in vain. 

So, aside from you accusing me multiple times of things that you misunderstand here are a couple of other things I can write quickly.

• Your comments seem very biased and almost attacking. I do not appreciate that. I am simply having a conversation.  
• There is a crucial difference between you and I and our ability to speak to the workflow of the program. I have almost only ever known point and click operated software. I am also a very huge fan of keyboard shortcuts and I know how efficient I can get with commands using keyboard shortcuts and point and click. It is obvious from your responses that you have not worked in an environment that uses keyboard commands nor have you optimized the way you use your aliases and the right mouse button on your mouse when you use ACAD. I have an understanding that you just don't have yet which makes most of the comments I have read of yours, somewhat irrelevant. 
  
  ...I put a lot of good efficiency tips for using ACE in my previous response but they are lost. I am not bummed about that. There seems to be a lot of ACE commands that you are not familiar with. 
  
  Wire tees: 
  ePlan forces the user to have to make deliberate insertions and deliberate choices each time a wire tee is inserted. This is a manual and unnecessary task. A panel will still work no matter which way a panel builder decides to jumper the wires. Having to make decisions like these is manual and it takes...time. Also, I would expect my electrician to make a much better decision about how to connect the dots over myself. He is doing this every day. I am not. 
  
  Also, ACE does have all the wire tee options. I am using 2012. Check out the screencasts.

---

@ccad2509 wrote:

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Hello Controls girl been on the beach drinking drinks with mixed fruit and little umbrellas in for the past 3 weeks

Ok let’s break down the paragraph below

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Ladders work similarly but you have to add wire tees everywhere. There also isn't the flexibility with scoot, wire trim, add rung, etc (and it is esp slow because I do not know of any existing keyboard commands in eplan for these edit tools.

You’re complaining Eplan is slow and in the same sentence you admit that you don’t know the commands you are supposed to be using don’t you see the issue here ?

If you use your mouse a lot in ACAD, I suggest learning/creating some aliases. Then set your right mouse button to enter. Use your left hand for command calling and the spacebar and right click as enter. Set the right click button to be enter while in all other modes. I like the time sensitive right-click.

Again you’re trying to use AutoCAD logic on what you find comfortable and wanting to make Eplan work and feel like ACADE If you want to program keyboard shortcuts there a whole section in how to do that in the help files  

However, It does make sense because in ACE you do not have to add a symbol and determine what version of it that you want to use for each and every insert for a wire tee. ACE is smart enough to know that there is a tee there and if you want to change the shape, you can do so later.

No ACADE is dumb very dumb the circular dot only conveys a connection it doesn’t convey current flow like a t-Piece and it doesn’t convey any information on how you want the wireman to build the panel it’s there in the T-piece

 You’re now in a position where you need to add further information at a later date to convey this information

It makes it extremely fast when throwing components in the space and then linking them together, not just in rungs but in any weird way.

What you probably don’t realize yet is with Eplan symbols the inserting point is dead center so they easily align in the x or y axis ever noticed some symbols in ACADE have the insertion point in different places so you can’t align symbols of different types?

You don’t need a scoot equivalent you just window and drag the T-piece or use the shortcut command “V” for a more accurate movement

 You’re blindly forgetting that the T-piece covers two distinctive functions you must do in ACADE which is

1 Show the connection

2 Route the wire connections in the correct sorting order so you’re wiring diagrams will create correctly

Once you accept that then you realize you’re wasting time because the functionality of ACADE is clunky in this case  

You can use the cont. c cont. v keyboard commands to copy symbols and it will number the symbols automatically on pasting into your page

try that with ACADE 2012 and see how far you get!!!

I'm confused at what you are getting at with this. Ever use the command AECOPYCOMP?

It’s very simple you can use windows functions naturally in Eplan Cntl C / Cntrl V and it works correctly

In ACADE 2012 you can’t do that you got unpredictable results (I think they finally got a fix going in 2015)

Or just press the inset button to launch the symbol explorer or RHS mouse button

I do not want to have to press any button to insert a wire tee! I do not want to have to deal with another component. I want it to be a passive symbol that knows where it belongs and knows when it doesn't belong as I trim wires or delete components. 

But you’re missing an important point you don’t have a wire trim command in Eplan because it’s not required

Connection points join automatically your complaining about the T-piece and how much extra work it takes but your ignoring the fact that you don’t require to use the trim command so the wire shortening to an intersecting wire then creates a dot connection is actually extra work in ACADE compared with Eplan

So you prepared to completely dismiss a design package because one function doesn’t work the way you want it to if you put time and effort into it you will eventually realize that it’s a better faster way of doing things

Just use the delete button to remove any wires add wires well you don’t even need to think about that one if a two symbols are in the horizontal or vertical plain and the connection points are aligned then the symbol will automatically connect

That is great, but you have to add wire tees everywhere. 

 Still fixated on a single none issue

 if you don’t want them to connect those two devices just use Cntrl Shift U and it will remove the line

There is even the smart connect command where you can drag part of the circuit out of horizontal or vertical alignment and Eplan will add all the bends automatically to create the modified circuit (no function in Acade for that command)

Yes but again, you have to have placed wire tees in all of the appropriate places. I find that AESCOOT is efficient enough or using the AE copy/move circuit. 

No you wrong here scoot doesn’t work like smart connect you just window and drag the circuit all in one go and move it in the x and y axis simultaneously

With ACADE solution you would need to scoot a complex circuit multiple times in the x axis then do the same for the y axis to achieve the same effect you do in one move in Eplan

And here’s a really good tip if you use the copy and paste command go to another page paste the information into the page just by pressing X will align the information in the x axis as per the original information and pressing Y will then align in the Y axis far better than creating a saved circuit then re inserting the saved circuit and then aligning the circuit which are the 3 distinct steps you need to take in Acade to achieve the same results

Simple and effective

In this case, I do not use the save circuit. I just use CTRL+SHIFT+C (copy with basepoint) and then I do a retag. I would love to see ACE make the copy circuit work across drawings. I like the alignment option in eplan but it doesn't add much to using copy with basepoint in ACE. 

 Oh boy yes it does your basic premise through most of this discussions is you can do things faster in ACADE

Well this really speeds up the copy and paste process I don’t need to define a base point and I have the flexibility of changing the inserted circuit in the x or y axis

I don’t even need to think to hard window the Circuit type Cntrl C, Cntrl V, X, Y and it’s in exactly the same place as the previous circuit

It’s all about these keyboard shortcuts you love

And why don’t you use the save circuit command? Maybe because it’s far too long and complicated?

In Eplan F10 with start the page macro process or window and LHS Mouse Button Starts the simple window macro process

And here’s a cleaver feature you can create a project where you store all your window and page macros and keep them all together where you can do some clever housekeeping esit and modify your macros and re create them

(There is no feature in existence that looks after blocks in a similar way in ACADE)

And as for macros that’s the tip of the iceberg let’s just say the Acade circuit builder is a bad attempt to copy this functionality whereas the EPLAN macros an average user can programme it not like with circuit builder where you need to be able to programme in LISP to get it to work (see various failed attempts to do this on this forum)

I'm confused at what you mean with the macro and symbolbuilder+lisp. Using the symbol builder is a learning curve but once you know naming conventions and you use the correct attributes things go fairly smoothly. This reminds me of another VERY basic thing that eplan cannot do. 

You just don’t get it

To use the Circuit builder (not symbol builder) you need to be very competent at lisp programming to make it work and if you troll through the forum here there is multiple instances where competent lisp programmers can’t make the Circuit builder work!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Which reminds me does symbol builder still throw up errors when you try to design a symbol with only an incoming connection or do we use the ignore error message command again!!!!

I have no knowledge in programming but here’s the very important point

I can configure Eplan macros to do things that these lisp programmers using circuit builder can’t even conceptualize yet

• component link lines!?

Oh dear why have link lines in the IEC format you don’t need them the assumption is anything to the RHS of a tagged device is part of the same device (and that’s how Eplan is far smarter than ACADE)

You only need to tag the first terminal in a terminal block with a terminal block number and any terminal to the left of it is part of that block

If you want to play the game of what Eplan can’t do in the NFPA standard I can play the Game of what ACADE can’t do to comply with IEC standards (still looking for the day when ACADE implement “= =” AND “++” as IEC codes but then again it’s only been about 10 years since these were added into the IEC standard) and believe me for every incidence you can find I can find at least 5 where ACADE is deficient in the IEC standard

 There is no command line in ePlan, which BLOWS. Use your left hand for keyboard commands and configure your right mouse click to be "enter" and watch how much faster you can work.

Why would you want a command line there is over 70 shortcut commands on the keyboard that some even do 2/3/4 equivalent ACADE commands in one keystroke

I have not learned the shortcut commands in eplan but I asked about many of them and the trainer wasn't so familiar. (the trainer was the NA trainer employed by eplan.) Anywho, with ACAD I can keep so many of my keyboard commands to one and two letter combos that I use with my left hand only. Right hand on the mouse.

Well if you even bother to check the help files and type “shortcut keys” you will find everything you need to know

Better still spend some quality time working your way through the help files and then tell me which is the better documented product !!!!!!!

You can set up custom toolbars far easier than you can do editing and creating a profile in ACADE
I can setup custom toolbars in eplan or in ACADE far easier than editing and creating a profiel in ACADE? I do not have to create an entire profile. I have my set of aliases. I dock my properties to the right and my project to the left. How much more custom do I need? I would love it if ACE made it much easier to be able to migrate all of the changes I made to the interface. 

 Bit of a none answer there you didn’t address the nightmare of creating a profile in ACADE or plain AutoCAD against the simple method of creating a profile in Eplan

• Wire dots automatically appear. I just think of all the extra time that I would have to spend adding stupid wire tee components. 

Ok not quite sure what you’re talking about here

 Wire tees, the annoying little things that you have to add in eplan everywhere in order for it to connect all of the wires. 

 You are really annoyed with this function

There are 3 basic things that annoy me about ACADE and two of them cripple the ability ACADE to be an engineering tool in Europe

1. I constantly trip up ACADE because it can’t work as fast as I type where as in Eplan it just works I don’t have to wait while ACADE decides to interrogate the database make a decision then eventually pass back the relevant information from the database and then do something!!!!
2. Reports are a BOS ( bag of S$%^) its truly terrible way of generating reports you can’t define a proper template (and what I mean is a block with lines arcs and circles attributes plus jpegs)it’s based on the AutoCAD mechanical Table function and its rubbish, here in Europe there are a few standard report formats that have been around forever(originally in paper format) all the competing ECAD products have these forms as templates yet ACADE doesn’t, it’s been an Idea in the ideas station from the beginning I know I posted it with quite a few votes but obviously the guys at Autodesk can’t see the monetary gain in doing this (BTW I can do it it’s not that difficult) which reminds me have they cleared the bug in the reports yet where installation/location codes cause errors in the display of the reports it’s only been there from the start
3. Sliced PLC I/O again 50% of all controls companies here in Europe use this method to display PLC connections ACADE can’t do that so immediately 50% of potential sales are gone because of this issue

 Actually they don’t just appear you have to use a command to draw a wire from a device to another wire/device which may include a number of shortcuts to get the connection to connect correctly

If the components are between two ladder rails, I just use AEADDRUNG and it connects all of them in a line like eplan. However, If I add a ladder and a bunch of rungs and then draw a wire straight down, it'll connect them all and then I can just trim (with fence). All wire connections are there. No inserting components. Maybe I'll make a short video of this. 

 Oops again your trying to equate what you do with ACADE and transfer that logic to Eplan

All you need to do is insert one T-piece and keep the mouse button depressed you can the drag along the  x  or y axis and it will continue to drop t pieces where it see a device to connect to

 much faster the cutting inserting and trimming

And as to adding a complete rung that can be easily achieved using a macro and linking that macro to a keyboard shortcut or toolbar button

Or you can use Cntl C and Cntl V to copy and pastes a rung

How is that any faster than just going to the toolbar selecting a t-piece and then dropping it into a circuit where it will auto connect (also there is the keyboard short cuts so you can be lazy and not even move your mouse to the connection toolbar)

In what I described above, I just created 20 tees in two commands and with a third command, I trimmed them. If I want to scoot them, easy peazy. (selecting things in eplan is sort of clunky)

Ill refer you to my previous response

but here is one very important thing the dots/t_pieces cover two distinct processes that you have to do in Acade

• Visually show a connection
• Force the wire sequence so you don’t have to run the wire sequence command and go through every connection to force Acade to sequence your wires correctly and then write all that information back (note I seen reports of bugs on this command in this forum)
• I do not think I've ran into this wire sequencing problem. Maybe I draw in a way that keeps me from running into it. However, I also love how eplan ties into a database and how all things get their information from that database. Nothing ACE can do to compete with that unless they wanted to completely rewrite the software from the ground up. Which, they might be interested in doing if enough people actually used the software. Did I tell you that I have been the only person who uses ACE in my last 4 jobs. I think that means that I am the only person out of 20-25 Controls Engineers who enjoys working with automated tools. The rest of them prefer to use vanilla CAD or even worse, Draftsight. The problem is very much with the community.
  
  

  You must be lucky that all you reports you generate are correct because there is numerous postings regarding how this does or does not work

  You’ve answered my question here inadvertently the way you think about vanilla AutoCAD and how superior you feel with ACADE is the way I feel about ACADE and Eplan with ACADE being the vanilla cad product
  
  

  There is a rumor which is has been floating around for some time which says Autodesk started to rewrite ACADE from the ground up and it was abandoned
  
  so if you take into account to make you project work properly you need to do both functions then you will find just by using the T-pieces you are actually faster than Acade that’s not including the 6 different ways that I can think of to screw up the wiring in Acade when drawing wires and connecting them
  Hmmm I am curious about this. Maybe I just draw in the sequence of how I want things ordered so I do not run into these problems? I do not know but maybe you are describing some of the times I've had something weird happen and could not explain it. 

Let’s count the ways

1. wire not touching a symbol but looks connected
2. symbol not sitting on the grid wire sitting on the grid or vice versa
3. wire actually not on a defined wire layer
4. two wires on top of each other one shorter than the other (this used to be quite common where ACADE gets confused when it scooted symbols it forgot to delete the previous line connection and overwrite the connecting line with a new one)
5. break in the wire
6. incoming and outgoing arrows cross references not up to date (Eplan does that automatically)
7. fan in fan out not correctly configured (this function is without doubt the worst piece of workflow implementation going it’s a shining example on how not to do it)

• Eplan is built like many of the other German apps that I have used. The interface is extremely cluttered and it includes so much irrelevant functionality all at once.

Eplan has a far better front interface you can easily detach all the windows spread them over a dual screen close or open a toolbar create your own toolbars and save the set up if you don’t like the way its set up re configure the screen to what you like it’s that easy 

Ha! This one is funny. I am very quick at catching on to most user interfaces and if I did not have training on eplan, I'd be lost. My biggest pet peeve is that there were numerous times during training that I would open properties with a component and the instructor would say "make sure not to enter in anything here, or there, etc or you will screw it up. This component doesn't use this function..." Well why would they not grey it out!?

Wait a minute your off the question here we are talking about the front interface and now you’re talking about properties

If I was you I would get your money back this trainer you keep referring to as you Americans say “SUCKS!!!!”

• wire numbering!

The wire numbering system is the best I’ve have ever seen it works several levels above what ACADE can offer

 you can have multiple different number formats saved in the project which will all number at the same time so you can have a numbering format for 3 phase supply that’s different from your 24vdc control which is different from say showing the PLC address on wire connected to the PLC card all in set up and numbering simultaneously

How would you achieve the same results in Acade?

Umm in the project settings ->wire numbers-> wire number options -> based on layer

Are you sure about that

Can the wire layer 1 have one number format say Page/Colum/unique number?

And another layer 2 for 3 Phase be based on Page /L/Unique number

And another Layer 3 for PLC Connections which is based on Rack number/slot no/ channel number

And here’s the kicker when you number the project you just use the wire number command once?

And as another nail in the coffin when you number the project a window pops up which displays the previous connections and the new connections side by side you can manually edit the whole project from this one window and as part of the standard functionality of Eplan you can even copy the information paste it into excel and manipulate the data from there and paste it back into Eplan

(And another little thing here once your set the wire number format you can export that format out of your project and import into another)

 And here is where it gets really smart because the number format also includes what Eplan calls the net configuration you can then define how each number format works as it goes through symbols i.e. does the number change or stay the same so in this case I can have 3 number formats which number wire numerically different from each other and behave completely differently as the wire numbers travel across the project ?

I see no difference between that and what I described above plus the way that terminals are numbered inside of the symbols in ACE. 

But what about changing the way the number sequence behaves you now have to go swap out all your terminals to another type where as you just edit the net configuration inside the number format function ?

You can set up numbering behavior based around client specific number requirements very easily

You can then just copy and paste drawings from other projects apply the numbering format and you’re done

Your method would require copying pages from various projects checking which symbols have been used and then swapping out symbols that don’t conform to the numbering format you need  

no need to have several different Terminal symbols in Eplan so one type transfers the wire number and the other dosent just a symbol for a teminal the number format net conficurtion dictates how the terminal works in regard to wire numbers

But you have to setup that net configuration everywhere correct?

The network configuration is a project wide setting so just by editing this information once you can completely change the behavior of how wire numbers react as they pass through symbols

There is also a series of default network configurations already in Eplan you just copy one and modify or create from scratch

Something Eplan is very good at is having lots of templates in that can be installed into the default installation

And when it gets back to parts well you already know ACADE is the worst for parts it doesn’t even make the top 5 nowadays for parts

? NFPA symbols?

Unlike Acade the symbol files are current and up to date somebody needs to tell those guys at Autodesk that the IEC 60617 symbol set was withdrawn a number of years ago

And yes NFPA Ghost and IEC symbols come as standard and if your really adventurous you can have up to 20 different symbol sets running in your project which all go through a much simpler and easier to use symbol navigator compared to Acade

• Eplan includes the ability to edit and change properties to components that do not use those properties. On top of that, if you do edit one of those parameters, you risk breaking the function. I hear people use the excuse that users should know what they are doing but I find that extremely counter-intuitive to great software design.

Ok this really is a load of misinformation

It is not misinformation. It is, here is a training class, here are the things people do what break things from working correctly. Instructor says he has no idea why something would be allowed because it would never be used in that way but they included the option to edit that part anyways. I forgot the details because it was involved but I look forward to any helpful hints you provide below. 

What a load of rubbish this trainer clearly doesn’t know what he is talking about

If you do something that Eplan doesn’t like it generates an error message which just by pressing “F1” will launch the help file with a full description of the error and how to clear the error correctly!!!!!!!!!

Try clearing error message in ACADE without using the ignore message function

(another one of my gripes about ACADE why have messages you can’t clear them in the normal use of the product either the message is false and should be coded out or the message is true and you must have a legitimate method or addressing it without frigging the system it’s pretty obvious the messages can’t be coded out and there is no solution that’s why the

CRAPPY IGNORE MESSAGE FUNCTION IS SUCH A FUNDEMENTALY BAD THING

There is no breaking symbols it’s a load of BS from your trainer  

• Eplan symbols work fundamentally different from the way ACADE symbols work
  
• They live in a separate symbol file external to the Eplan project you can then modify the external symbol and it will automatically update all instances of that symbol without the need to run through a complex and time consuming block replacement routine
  I wasn't mentioning that. I meant like properties of the devices. I cannot remember all of the different attributes that you can change but you can screw up links so that text travels across components and things like that. 
• Eplan symbols have over a 1000 standard attributes and over 200 user defined attributes what’s fundamentally different here is you have visibility schemes set in the symbol
  
  this means when you open a symbol durring normal working you have a pull down menu which will then apply a visibility scheme this scheme is easily configurable and you can display any attribute apply size colour position and font information to each attribute so you can have multiple saved display formats inside you symbol. Yes, I am not certain about all of this but I am certain that I could edit something that I would never edit for that type of symbol. In my opinion, the option to view that attribute should not exist as it would only do harm. It implies that there is more to know when really, there isn't. 

  
  You’re applying AutoCAD logic again here and missing the fundamentals

  The symbol has a default visibility setting where the attributes have visibility states positional information and formatting

  Now for example you want to change the position of the tag or move the cross-reference you can do that and save it as a visibility scheme

  The key here is that your driving standardization of visibility if you wanted to achieve the same in ACADE you would be creating multiple symbols of the same type with the attributes mapped to different positions and visibility states

  And we both know what will really happen the ACADE editor will use the various attribute editing functions just to change the symbol formatting which will not be documented/saved in any shape or form for later reuse which in the end will cause presentation inconsistences throughout the project

  In certain conditions different visibility schemes can be applied here’s one recently

  Pilz safety relay one colleague wants the relay contact image beside the coil and I usually put the contact image in the standard position at the bottom of the page here two visibility scheme can be created

If you decide to modify a visibility scheme you can save it as a new scheme or as the old scheme and here’s another clever feature because if you save the scheme as previous Eplan will ask you if you want to apply this new scheme to all these symbols in a project and instantaneously changes all the symbols (no block swap function needed here)

 Oh wait, are you you are talking about visibility like the visibility for attributes on an ACAD block. Again, something that any database driven software will have advantage with over something like ACE. I do absolutely love the ability though.

Your stating to get it but ACADE can’t do it you would need the ability in the symbol to remember various positions and have the ability to move attributes and change their settings

Wait a minute there is a partial solution you can do with plain AutoCAD and dynamic blocks it’s a pity dynamic blocks don’t work properly in ACADE 

And now some food for thought I’m playing with the 3D panel module at the moment and here’s something to make you jealous

1. its dirt easy to use
2. you don’t need to learn a load of 3d modelling functions to get productive
3. it has very clever functionality where you can define clash zones/thermal zones
4. it knows how to mount devices onto din rail at the correct height automatically
5. writes back into Rittal Therm so you can complete your thermal calculations
6. easily imports step files and through some simple wizards make the models Eplan compliant
7. has a brilliant auto wiring function where you define a wire type and what sort of trucking it can route through (wire segregation)
8. simple to use manual wire/cable routing tool
9. automatic fill levels on trunking it works out how much space is in the trunking and tells you whether your approaching or exceeding the fill levels you defined in the project
10. Calculates the length of wire/cable taking into account bend radius and you define a wire stripping length and extra length addition (which can be a % or absolute value)
11. It will generate an error if the wire is too small or too large connecting to a device
12. You can define different connection details to each end of a wire one could be a ring crimp the other could be a ferrule!!!!
13. Oh here’s a good one it totalizes all the wire types used automatically
14. Writes data directly into a CNC machine / Wire Cutting machine/ Label Machine

Good luck on spending the next 6 months to a year learning inventor before you can do a proper 3D model of an electrical control panel (Autodesk Note this is why the way you implement ACADE and Inventor will eventually fail forcing electrical engineers to learn inventor is not going to happen on any level)

---

[Anonymous]

Leaving aside the original topic, which actually would be very useful... not unlike Thingiverse in the 3D printing world... I want to address a few topics... each of you have posted some reasonable to very good points... E-plan is a great program for electrical engineering and ACADE is oftentimes essentially a crap sandwich... Let me focus in on one of the good points that actually have been mentioned but lost in the minutia and glossed over in your race to measure your "intellectual prowess"... 

ACADE is admittedly a database kluge built on top of the existing mechanical system... I can perform ALL the functions of panel layout (including 3D to insure space requirements and clearances) as well as setting up wiring tables and cabling FASTER in vanilla Autocad than in ACADE... One has to learn and exclusively use the commands specific to ACADE or else it breaks your drawing... this is a fail... there is also the forced compliance with individual selections quite often as opposed to batch operations and shifting, copying, or moving sections of circuits... It is nice that there is at least a fairly decent database of some manufacturers parts in the various types for footprints and symbols, but they rarely seem to fit in with the engineering standards from company to company... meaning that most every part needs some kind of modification or infrastructure build-up in order to work within a given companies guidelines as well as all the ones that are missing (Remember the original topic?) ... great once you get a decent collection built up, but sucks until it is done... EPLAN supposedly does a lot of this stuff wonderfully... but costs upwards of five times as much... meaning that it is a VERY hard sell to the bean counters who are always trying to squeeze out more production or efficiency from you without deigning to invest one thin dime...  and then there is the whole "educational and training" thing... could either of you afford to outright purchase *either* of those programs on your own in order to learn it?  Last I checked, it was a minimum $4000 for the full ACADE package PER YEAR, plus additional for any specific training to actually use the program correctly without breaking it, as well as training locations to do so... fine if you happen to be in or near a larger city, otherwise, good luck!  Do I really need to spell out how much more EPLAN is?  Then there is the general rule of NOT being able to load your own software onto your employers servers... so you make the investment so you can learn to use it and then you are stuck with it unless you open and run your own business. . Therefore the only real options you have to gain access to these programs is to find a company or institution who has already covered that initial cost in order to learn and use it... even for just making comparisons... I offer a round of applause to those fortunate enough to have gained access and actually learned how to properly use more than one type of CAD program... because the personal investment would break many (if not most) users of these products... and we are back again to the tender mercies of whatever the employing company or learning institution is willing to invest in to perform any actions on any CAD package... 

Therein lies the rub...AH yes, you will try to refute that statement with the ever present "but they have Trial packages"... usually for only 30 days and NOT including any serious learning or training package... and many "Student editions" are either crippled or require proof of attending some college or university,  thereby leaving one to hunt down information and training on various available sites such as Lynda or Youtube, some of which cost money as well... and hope you have plenty of time to wait for a response on the forums or even trying to hunt down something specific for yourself... meanwhile your superiors are breathing down your necks because a project is hung up or stagnating... or you just don't have much opportunity to effectively test out the merits of a product "on your own time" except for dedicating evenings and weekends and perhaps even vacation days... all to see whether a CAD package will work better for your situation... then you STILL have to sell it up the ladder to your superiors and the bean counters....

Of course you may be wondering about this "upstart" here... I've been doing this for 30+ years... started on AutoCAD in the late '70's, and have had the opportunity to at least play with, if not directly work with, various iterations of AutoCAD (and variants), Solidworks, Draftsight, Pro-E, CATIA, SCAD, Fusion 360, Sketchup, ECAD, and a whole host of various other packages ranging all the way to the "lower end" and free market...  Yes, the power available to the big names is great, depending on the needs and funding available, but the costs will often dictate what package you end up using as a primary and the one you learn to be truly effective or efficient on... it is all well and good to talk about how "easy" a given package can be... especially considering input devices and styles... but we, as engineers, are rarely ever able to choose, much less define, what is really needed, nor are we given much option for testing or comparison between packages due to the high to astronomical investment required of nearly every truly decent CAD package... Then there is the uphill fight to even get the proper equipment or "hardware" to properly run and truly utilize the packages (ever try to run something like full Autocad in only 4Gig of memory on one 15 inch screen?!?) I t's no wonder that a lot of engineers are very helpful to others in part due to those obstructions, that steep entry curve and various other inherent difficulties... unfortunately, a few others can be miserly, condescending, or even arrogant... Which do you choose to be? 

Overall, kindly remember that this *IS* an Autocad forum and not a podium for championing your particular flavor of CAD package.. if you can't address the issues or questions raised regarding AutoCAD, then kindly drag it into some other forum or medium for discussion rather than posting massive walls of vaguely relevant text that others must scroll through in their quest to get their *AutoCAD* issues addressed...

[ccad2509]

So a little history 50% of my income comes from converting from one cad system to another and what I see in you posting is a lot of common moans / gripes about the march of technology

ACADE is admittedly a database kluge built on top of the existing mechanical system... I can perform ALL the functions of panel layout (including 3D to insure space requirements and clearances) as well as setting up wiring tables and cabling FASTER in vanilla Autocad than in ACADE...

One has to learn and exclusively use the commands specific to ACADE or else it breaks your drawing... this is a fail...

This is common moan/gripe 1  

Its only a fail if you refuse to learn the correct command to do the task this is a common problem transitioning from ACAD to ACADE as you instinctively fall back into bad habits

One of my gripes and I’ve posted many times on this subject and even posted an idea in the ideas station

There should be a function to disable the normal Autocad commands and forces you only to use the ACADE commands

there is also the forced compliance with individual selections quite often as opposed to batch operations and shifting, copying, or moving sections of circuits... It is nice that there is at least a fairly decent database of some manufacturers parts in the various types for footprints and symbols, but they rarely seem to fit in with the engineering standards from company to company... meaning that most every part needs some kind of modification or infrastructure build-up in order to work within a given companies guidelines as well as all the ones that are missing (Remember the original topic?) ... great once you get a decent collection built up, but sucks until it is done...

This is common moan/gripe 2 

If you want a product to work exclusively to the way your company works, then you need to invest big money Ford motor company did it a number of years ago when they didn’t like the 3D products out there so they paid to have their own 3D product created

So if you don’t have the money and actually want to come into the 21st century guess what you have to get a product of the shelf and configure it to the way you want it to work and guess what that’s what everybody else has to do

 EPLAN supposedly does a lot of this stuff wonderfully... but costs upwards of five times as much... meaning that it is a VERY hard sell to the bean counters who are always trying to squeeze out more production or efficiency from you

without deigning to invest one thin dime...  and then there is the whole "educational and training" thing... could either of you afford to outright purchase *either* of those programs on your own in order to learn it?  Last I checked, it was a minimum $4000 for the full ACADE package PER YEAR, plus additional for any specific training to actually use the program correctly without breaking it, as well as training locations to do so... fine if you happen to be in or near a larger city, otherwise, good luck!  Do I really need to spell out how much more EPLAN is? 

This is common moan/gripe 3 

No its not when you work out the efficiency savings 10 times faster than plain Autocad 5 times faster than ACADE are minimum gains

Reducing you design time and improving time to market depending on how your accountants cost that in the payback can be very fast

You moan about having to modify create parts well that wasted time how may hours a week do you waste on creating parts data when you can just download the data from Eplan ?

Then there is the general rule of NOT being able to load your own software onto your employers servers... so you make the investment so you can learn to use it and then you are stuck with it unless you open and run your own business. . Therefore the only real options you have to gain access to these programs is to find a company or institution who has already covered that initial cost in order to learn and use it... even for just making comparisons... I offer a round of applause to those fortunate enough to have gained access and actually learned how to properly use more than one type of CAD program... because the personal investment would break many (if not most) users of these products... and we are back again to the tender mercies of whatever the employing company or learning institution is willing to invest in to perform any actions on any CAD package... 

Therein lies the rub...AH yes, you will try to refute that statement with the ever present "but they have Trial packages"... usually for only 30 days and NOT including any serious learning or training package... and many "Student editions" are either crippled or require proof of attending some college or university,  thereby leaving one to hunt down information and training on various available sites such as Lynda or Youtube, some of which cost money as well... and hope you have plenty of time to wait for a response on the forums or even trying to hunt down something specific for yourself... meanwhile your superiors are breathing down your necks because a project is hung up or stagnating... or you just don't have much opportunity to effectively test out the merits of a product "on your own time" except for dedicating evenings and weekends and perhaps even vacation days... all to see whether a CAD package will work better for your situation... then you STILL have to sell it up the ladder to your superiors and the bean counters....

Of course you may be wondering about this "upstart" here... I've been doing this for 30+ years... started on AutoCAD in the late '70's, and have had the opportunity to at least play with, if not directly work with, various iterations of AutoCAD (and variants), Solidworks, Draftsight, Pro-E, CATIA, SCAD, Fusion 360, Sketchup, ECAD, and a whole host of various other packages ranging all the way to the "lower end" and free market...  Yes, the power available to the big names is great, depending on the needs and funding available, but the costs will often dictate what package you end up using as a primary and the one you learn to be truly effective or efficient on... it is all well and good to talk about how "easy" a given package can be... especially considering input devices and styles... but we, as engineers, are rarely ever able to choose, much less define, what is really needed, nor are we given much option for testing or comparison between packages due to the high to astronomical investment required of nearly every truly decent CAD package... Then there is the uphill fight to even get the proper equipment or "hardware" to properly run and truly utilize the packages (ever try to run something like full Autocad in only 4Gig of memory on one 15 inch screen?!?) I t's no wonder that a lot of engineers are very helpful to others in part due to those obstructions, that steep entry curve and various other inherent difficulties... unfortunately, a few others can be miserly, condescending, or even arrogant... Which do you choose to be? 

This is common moan/gripe 4

I want it on a plate  / why should I change

I am not prepared to invest in my future, so I won’t do anything about it

I bought my own Eplan and ACADE and Promis e and Wscad and see electrical and IronCAD

Each time I spend time learning the product and its all paid back as I have a very strong knowledge of multiple cad products and I’m not unemployed in fact it works to my advantage being able to migrate seamlessly to different products

And here’s a big clue to investing in your future once you get your head round 2 products amazingly the others fall into place as they all have to effectively do the same thing

There’s a saying here “same meat different gravy”

Would it surprise you that I cut my teeth on Autocad 9 and I had been using Eplan 4.03 previous to that

Overall, kindly remember that this *IS* an Autocad forum and not a podium for championing your particular flavor of CAD package.. if you can't address the issues or questions raised regarding AutoCAD, then kindly drag it into some other forum or medium for discussion rather than posting massive walls of vaguely relevant text that others must scroll through in their quest to get their *AutoCAD* issues addressed...

You’ve been polite about this, so I will return the favour

This forum is full of rabid ACADE acolytes who wont even consider there is another ECAD product out there

Bearing in mind ACADE came into existence back in 2005 when it bought a failing company WD toolbox (didn’t Autodesk figure out this might not be the right product to purchase)

Eplan’s been around for 42 years now and other products out there have similar lengths in the market

ACADE was added to the Autodesk stable because there was a glaring hole in their portfolio and is not taken seriously as an Autodesk product its considered a necessarily evil to complete the portfolio and the lack of investment and lack of improvements clearly show this

That being said why do I post Eplan details well over the years I have gone from a rabid ACADE acolyte living with the hope that ACADE would become a viable alternative to Eplan

To becoming disillusioned user watching the same posts again and again about the same problems  

not being addressed and multiple bugs living in the product for years not being fixed (yes even back to ACADE2005)

And finally, when some ACADE acolyte post a problem wanting a solution or function they want to appear in the next version of ACADE and it already exists in Eplan I point out what they want has been addressed and solved by the competition a number of years ago

My final comment is this

ACADE is in the top 4 common ECAD solutions out there when you compare the other 3 you find they have the same look and feel and approach functionality in a similar way

Then you have ACADE that’s different but its not a good different ACADE fails in every metric you care to mention with the exception of one

Which is sales and that’s deceptive when I was working for an Autodesk dealership my task was to call round the ACADE users to generate training sales from my own personal experience at the time  3 out of 4 ACADES sold were not being used as an Electrical design station they were being used by a mechanical engineer because an ACADE bought with an Inventor was a cheap way to get a CAD station