Multi-Panel project design

[Anonymous]

I'm looking for some help with a designing a project that has several remote panels.  I am trying to keep them all in one project so all components, wires, and terminals have a unique name/number and easy to resequence if something gets added or removed.  If anyone has  something designed to this nature, if possible could you share the files? I would like to see how things are laid out and tied together.

[ccad2509 · Accepted solution]

this is one of those things

if autocad properlery implemented iec 81346 with functional assignment/instalation/and mounting location codes with the correct way of interpreting all the tag values then it would be dirt easy but unfortunatley they dont and your going to have to find a work around

but the clue here is

you make panel 1 "=panel 1" using an instalation code

you make panel 2 "=panel 2" using an instalation code

you make panel 3 "=panel 3" using an instalation code

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the information.  I figured that might be the only way, but wanted to (if possible) get more ideas from the CAD community.  Hoping someone might have come up with a good work around like you said.

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@ccad2509 wrote:

unfortunatley they dont and your going to have to find a work around

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[jseefdrumr · Accepted solution]

Well...it sort of depends on your needs.

Are you duplicating something, like a conveyor line, and are facing the prospect of having several junction boxes, etc with the same names?

Or do you just have a single, sprawled-out system, with a main panel and then some smaller remote ones?

If you're facing the first scenario, you'll probably need to make use of location and installation codes, and if you're following the IEC standards then the issues outlined by CCAD come into play. They're valid issues, so if you're using IEC, you very well could be facing the need for a workaround. But, again depending on your needs, you might be able to slide with location/installation under the NFPA standard. (It doesn't care how you use location and installation codes at all.)

If you're facing the second scenario, it's relatively easy so long as you don't have a ginormous number of remote panels. Where I work, our projects always fall within that second scenario. We always have remote panels, and operator panels/consoles. We manage it all within one project. Our current machine has one main panel and ten remote panels, plus two operator panels and about 30 small junction boxes. That project clocks in at around 120 pages, and sometimes it gets annoying scrolling through the project list to find drawings. But keep in mind, that's an interior and exterior layout for every remote panel and operator console, plus around 85 pages of schematics. 

I can't post a whole project here, but in case it helps, I posted a screenshot of the drawing index for the project I mentioned. It shows all the drawings, in the order they appear in the Project Manager.

Hope this helps,

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the response and the example of the project layout jseefdrumr.  I'm definitely closer to your style with one main control panel and several remote.  Some of them do repeat as a left/right/top/bottom system.  Not sure I can run it like yours because of that.  I will have to try and test it out first.

[jseefdrumr · Accepted solution]

If you don't have to follow the IEC conventions, you can use the location/installation codes to do this. These work, generally, in two ways.

One, you can set the installation/location codes as a drawing property, and instruct the software to assign those codes to any component you place in that drawing.

Two, you can draw location boxes around the components individually. You can set either location or installation using this command. (This method is better suited for a drawing that shows, for example, a circuit that passes through several enclosures.)

As I said before, NFPA doesn't care about location/installation. It's not a part of the standard. If you're in the USA, chances are you'll be able to go this route.