Report for components with catalog information without being in catalog

[Thomasbatson]

Hello,

I am new to AutoCAD Electrical and cannot find a report that will show components that have catalog information (when right click, edit component) without matching catalog information.  

The issue is, sometimes the catalog information is manually typed in (without using catalog lookup) or use PLC I/O utility to pull in the devices but the typed in information is not yet added to the catalog.  I hope that makes sense.

Is there a report to show these specific errors?  I tried to search online but nothing came up with the specific information I'm looking for, possibly a wording issue but any help or advice is very much appreciated.

Thank you.

[rhesusminus]

There is no report that will achieve this at the moment.

Your best bet is to code a user post that will go through the BOM, and remove those entries that exist in the database.

The API for this is:

(c:ace_get_cat_data LeavBlank Manufacturer Catalog AssyCode BlockName)

Type this on the command line in AutoCAD Electrical and press enter:

(c:ace_get_cat_data "" "AB" "194E-A25-1756" "" "HDS11")

If the part number isn't found, it will return nil. If it's found, some data will be returned.

Unfortunately I just don't have time right now to do it, or else, I'd be happy to create it for you. Seems like a 30-minute job.

[Thomasbatson]

Thank you for your response, it didn't appear as if there was but there is a lot I still don't know about.  I appreciate your recommendation as well, I will give that a try probably later this week.

Thank you!

[PatMurnen_Adsk]

Hi,

When AutoCAD Electrical runs a Bill of Material report, some of the fields are pulled out of the catalog database at the time the report is run. So let's say that in the catalog database the DESC field is always filled in. When you run a Bill of Materials report, the components without any value in the DESC field are the ones that are not found in the catalog database. Or you could look at the default DESCRIPTION field which is a combination of a number of fields from the catalog database. If that is blank then the chances are high that the component's catalog is not in the catalog database.

Trond's method is probably the best. But if you don't have the time to create a user post, this method is available out of the box if you are just looking for a way to quickly identify which catalog values need added to the database.

Regards,

Pat Murnen

[rhesusminus]

What version of AcadE are you running Thomas?

[Thomasbatson]

I am using 14.1.3.0 AutoCAD electrical 2017 sp.1

[rhesusminus]

See the attached file, BOM.zip.

The two files in the zip-file should be copied to C:\Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2017\Acade\Support\en-US\Shared

Make a backup of the BOM.dcl and BOM.lsp that's already there.

With the new files in place, you should now get a new option at the user post button.

Try it out and see if it works as expected.

[Thomasbatson]

Thank you for the attachment and tour recommendation as well Pat. I will be on site working a startup the next few days but will spend some time on these Friday if the start does well or maybe monday. Thank you again and will post with what it looks like.

[Thomasbatson]

Thank you for the ZIP file.  Sorry for the delay in testing, I was pulled away last week.  I was able to follow your instructions and the new option does display if there is a component with catalog information that is not in the catalog so thank you very much for that. 

I do seem to have an issue if there aren't any errors, so if all of the components have information in the catalog, it seems to freeze my autocad and I have end task to get out.  How can I avoid that with your new coding?

Being honest I didn't know anything about these files before so I apologize for not knowing how to manipulate them but appreciate your help.

[rhesusminus · Accepted solution]

Ooops.. Small bug in the code, that didn't handle "no result" 🙂

Fixed files are attached.

[Thomasbatson]

That is awesome and very helpful, thank you very much.  Works perfect.