AutoCAD Vs. AutoCAD Electrical. Worth the upgrade?

[powermixx]

Why make the jump? I'm a drafter and some electrical engineers mention they should have AutoCAD Electrical.

Autodesk is offering an upgrade from LT (04, 05 or 06) to Electrical for $2k. What makes it so much better? Is it worth the upgrade? Thank you!

[Tim_L]

Hi,

As a end user I would say yes. The more complex and/or large the projects are the louder I will say yes, it is absolutely worth it. Our machines can have over 1000 sensors, 6 or 7 J-Boxes with remote I/O, multiple vision inspection areas, not to mention a few hundred feet of wire way. Don’t forget all of the multi-pin connectors and multi-conductor cables and of course a pile of terminal blocks all connected to a free standing enclosure with at least one PLC, servo drives, power supplies ….

When a schematic and panel layout is ‘complete’, it can take several of us a couple of days to check wiring to/from call outs, component location call outs, I/O tables, Bill Of Material line items, etc. The report packages bundled with ACE 2008 can do the same checking anytime you click on the little button.

On the other hand, if your project only requires a few sheets (B size) and have one or two panel layouts your probably OK with what you have. You don’t need a sledgehammer to crack a walnut but you are not going to drive a railroad spike with a nutcracker.

Good luck

[Anonymous]

There are good reasons for upgrading to AutoCAD Electrical if you design and document electrical control systems.

We have identified the top 10 reasons to move from AutoCAD to AutoCAD Electrical in the following paper:
http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/autodesk_autocad_electrical_2008_top_10_reasons.pdf

In addition, we have conducted a study to identify productivity gains when moving from AutoCAD to AutoCAD Electrical:
http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/cad_electrical_productivity_study.pdf

Also, check out other users’ posts in this newsgroup; you may find useful information here.

I hope this helps.

Regards,
Jose
Autodesk Message was edited by: Jose Santos (Autodesk)

[pmccutcheon]

I used to use vanilla Autocad, and did the cross referencing and wire numbering by hand.

I think I timed myself on one project (maybe 30-40 sheets) and I think I took 3 days to fully renumber, retag, and cross reference.

AE automates a lot of this.

Key features for me:
-sheets in a project are grouped via the WDP project file. You can quickly hop around sheets that belong together.
-can quickly update/number titleblocks
-automatic wire numbering
-automatic device tagging
-automatic cross referencing and sheet--to-sheet signal linking
-catalog parts are picked from a database (so you always describe the same way and don;t make typo's on part numbers)
-BOM can be generated from the dwgs. We are able to export the BOM to our MRP system.
-builds on your ACAD knowledge (competing products require you to learn how to draw again)

The bad news: my opinion is that it looks tricky to setup. For me, the system had already been setup by someone knowledgeable - not sure if I would have time/inclination to set it up myself. Not sure how well it works out of the box (we shrunk/modified a lot of the parts libraries).

(However, I'd say its no worse to setup than competing products such as EPLAN)

OVerall, I wouldn't work without it (or something simlar)