Adding Child Cross Reference to Parent With No Pins

[andrewH6NGQ]

Hi, I have been using ACE for a few months now and I am really getting the hang of it, thanks to various resources such as Nate Holt and Doug McAlexander.

I have a customer that I have been doing work for and I have been trying to replicate their method of design but there is one aspect I haven't figured out how to replicate; showing the cross-reference of a child part's pin on the parent symbol.

Their designs use Beckhoff industrial PCs with I/O slices. In their design they will have pages that show a group of IPCs or I/O slices that show which page each of their channels is shown on. Ex: DI02 CH1 (Pin 1) is at =02 Sheet 5, and when you go to that page you then see a single box with a pin connection for channel 1.

I have not used the PLC toolsets to generate my symbols for these parts but I have instead created them as regular components with the family code DV and I have had no issues with anything thus far. What I did was make the parent a horizontal component with no pins just to carry the catalog and connection data, but then I made generic vertical child components that would carry the connections. I made them in 1port, 2port, 4port, and 8port flavors.

What I would like to do is replicate their method of showing a child part's cross-reference next to the appropriate graphical pin on the parent symbol. I want this to have intelligence to it so I don't have to manually make text each time. I don't mind building this into the part's footprints if need be.

1. Is pinlist the thing I need to utilize?

2. If so, how do I do that exactly?

3. If not, what tool?

4. Likewise, how would I use that alternate tool?

[rhesusminus · Accepted solution]

It's not possible to achieve this with standard functionality in AutoCAD Electrical. Cross-references are only shown in one location at a parent symbol, and a child symbol will only point back to the parent component with its cross-reference.

Your screenshots are from EPLAN where cross-references are solved a little more flexible. 

[rickstarosto4361]

all of our drawings have the same OLC format you have shown I too asked this question, but no success. i do usw EPLAN also, i wish ACADE would have thought out side the box as far as TRUE customized symbols.