Autocad Electrical for Cabling Diagrams - Navigational Systems

[Anonymous]

Hello everybody.

This is my first post here, hope to get some help. I am quite new to Autocad Electrical. Educated in regular Autocad and Inventor from my study.

In my new (first) engineer job, I am required to use Autocad Electrical (I have no electrical background) to make schematics of Devices (Routers, monitors, Radars, Computers, Power supplies etc) and how they are connected via different cables. We've established that for the initial drawings, we want to make these as a single-line diagram (?) with no wire information for the wires inside the cables (We might want to do drawings describing some wire connections later, or keep this information to spreadsheets only). When it's done, we want to produce Reports like cable lists with alle of the cables, the connected devices, locations etc.

What I have done so far is used the schematic symbol builder with a simple cad drawing of the device, and made a pin connector for each cable connector (ethernet, DVI port, power in, power out etc.) I have two A1 drawings, one for power cables, and for signal cables. I have made different wire types for 220VAC, 24VDC, Ethernet etc.

Example of power cables drawing. Magenta is 24 VDC from PS-1, light blue is 24VDC PS-2, dark blue is 220VAC.

As far as I understand, this is not how Autocad Electrical is made to be used, but for this use, I think it will work well.

My questions:

1. How should I name the cables? Using Cable markers, wire numbers or wire labels? The cables will have a numbering format according to what devices they are connected to, but at the moment, the devices does not have a number, only a name: example: Monitor-1, etc. The plan is to use the "export/import data to spreadsheet" to apply the right cable numbers. In earlier projects, my coworkers have been using cable tags, but as I understand cable tags are meant to be used on wires in a cable, not the cable itself.
2. If the devices had a number in their description, could I make a automatic wire numbering format which names the cable by including both of the numbers of the devices it is connected to?
   
   Any other things I should be concerned about, using Autocad Electrical in this manner? I have seen no other examples og ACADE being used like I use it.

Any help is much appreciated.
Many thanks in advance.

[Anonymous]

I believe the drawing you have produced is the Top Level Overall System Block Diagram.

1. I normally crate a block diagram as you did - Block Diagram Project Manager.
2. then  create a separate project manager for detailed wiring diagram where  everything can be defined in detail.

I would personally use cable marker far each cable line. Here I take each cable line represents harness assembly which may have 1, 2, or more wires (conductor) inside of the bundle. You can label cable marker as harness 1, 2, 3 or Harness Monitor 1 or Power Harness Assembly or Data Harness Assembly or Control Harness Assembly etc. These symbols allow you to link cables symbols the database to define the harness part number if cable assembly part number is already in the database ie you are going to use existing harness assembly.

When you start actual detailed wiring / harness drawing you define wire numbers to suit your requirements eg. project specific wire numbering or system specific wire numbering or component specific wire numbering. It all depends on the company or industry standard. You also would be able to show harness assembly number (which was defined in the Block diagram) in the detailed wiring diagram to show the wires included in a Harness Assembly.