Should we adopt ACADE

[Ethan_Close]

Hello all. Just a bit of information first. I work for a small electrical engineering company and we do a whole range of work. We have some work that involves pump stations, filtration plants, or chlorination processes. For those projects we create the P&ID, panel layout, wiring schematic, and loop diagrams. We generally do not create reports or BoMs for these drawings as far as I know. I am currently the person responsible for trying to learn if ACADE is going to work for our workflow and if it is then implementing it. We currently use ACAD MEP for our work. We don't use really any of the AEC part of MEP however. We do use the project manager though.

Usually the way that we do the work for these projects it by getting either a P&ID narrative or a P&ID schematic done by another 3rd party. We usually then take that P&ID create our version of it and then create a wiring schematic from it. And then from that wiring schematic we create our panel layouts and terminal strips. And then from there we will create our loop diagrams. However from the testing that I've done with electrical, I'm sure I've just touched the surface on what it can actually do, I've run into several issues however that have been fairly major stopping points for what we want to the software to do. I am currently doing this testing on ACADE 2020.

I guess what I am looking for is an opinion on how well electrical would work for the workflow described at the top. And if they best way to work around some of the issues that I have mentioned is to create custom blocks that link together slightly differently or something along those lines. Or if ACADE just doesn't work for the described workflow or not. 

Sorry about the mountain of text in a single post.

Thanks,

Ethan

p.s. OK it appears that posting something too long makes it get flagged as spam and then deletes it. I'll be splitting this into two parts then.

[Ethan_Close]

Here are some of the issues that I've run into. That will be common when we would create our drawings.

First a possibly simple one. There doesn't seem to be a way to insert a PLC on a panel layout and then pull from a list to insert it on the wiring schematic. When you pull from the Panel List it doesn't see a PLC footprint for inserting onto the schematic. You can however insert a PLC on the schematic and then pull from the schematic list and insert it on the panel layout. It seems weird that creating the connection is automatically is one way. Yes, you can still edit the tag to get the two to link up. This one wouldn't come up too often for us but still seems like an oddity. Would a new footprint need to be created so it can work both ways or just accept that it can only be done one way? I tested this with the AB 1756-IB16. I didn't test others to see if they worked but that is one of the PLC cards that we frequently use. Another odd thing, it may just be because of the way our firm does it, is that PLCs do not have a wipeout in their block and so when shown on a DIN rail the rail behind the PLC is still visible.

Second. When dealing with Terminal Strips it doesn't appear that there is a way to insert already existing terminal blocks/fuses/etc. when creating the terminal strip. You can create the strip with blank terminal and then associate the terminals to one of the blank ones on the strip. But for Fuses and maybe other items I don't know. You have to create the terminal strip with all the components on it and then you can insert from that list onto the wiring schematic. For something like this is it just that we would need to create a custom set of symbols to use on wiring schematics that are creating as terminal blocks instead of as fuses? 

Third. Pretty sure this one isn't possible within the confines of electrical without writing a script. But we handle our wire numbers differently then just giving them a tag based on the ladder rung. E.g. wire 201 on rung 201. Instead we will usually say where the wire is going to and from. E.g. for a wire going between a fuse and a contact. CP-1000-FU04/YA-4500. The CP-1000 being the location of the object. That I know you can do with the %L in the wire tag. FU04 just being the fuse followed by the number. And then on a second line which I'm guessing you can handle with a updated wire number block. Is the the component tag of the contact.

Three A. With number of items I haven't seen a option for doing leading zeroes for single digit numbers. For fuses 1-10 we usually use the numbering of FU00, FU01, FU02, etc. I don't know if this is an option or not. But this isn't terribly important.

Four. This is an oddity that I have found with a couple of P&ID components. I've attached a image with the simple thing I was testing. But all three of those items have the same component tag. So as far as I understand they should all be linked and when you change the description and catalog info for one they should all change. But if you change either of the IO points it will only affect the other IO points. However if you edit the mixer it will edit both of the other IO points. There are a lot of similar things to this also dealing with WDTAGALT about them not linking at all or not linking both ways. I dont' know if others have suggestions about this or have run into this themselves.

There are probably several others things that I have run into that I haven't been able to figure our or find a resource to try and figure out.

[james_moore · Accepted solution]

That's a loaded question all right!  I will say, where there's a will, there's a way.  ACE is so open-ended, it should be able to be customized to do just about anything, and what it won't do, you should be able to find a work-around for while searching for the ideal method/solution.

WDTAGALT is a tricky way to show the same component in more than one location.  Another potential way is to use child blocks, even though that's probably not the main intent of parent-child block relations in ACE.

As for your number formatting (FU1 vs FU01), try editing the project properties, and under the "Component" tab, select sequential numbering and make the first number 01 instead of 1.  I THINK that will do what you want.

The PLC panel vs schematic chicken-or-egg problem... you probably would have to define a static I/O card symbol before you would be able to start with a panel symbol and expect to generate a schematic symbol from that.  Parametric-built I/O card symbols appear to be the primary method for building the schematic I/O.  There is no tool I'm aware of to allow you to put the I/O description data on the panel symbol anyway; I'm not sure what the advantage would be to doing the panel layout symbol first?

Most of the symbols included with ACE do not include wipeouts.  It's like Autodesk gave us a sample collection, but you probably have to spend some time customizing your own block library to really get what you want from the ACE package.  It's a great tool once you've got things nailed down for your department, but ACE really should come with a disclaimer like "some assembly required."  I have yet to work for a company that found it was ready for prime time right out of the box.

[Ethan_Close]

I guess this tells me what I need to know. Which is that unfortunately for a lot of stuff we will have to re-make our current library of blocks so we can get them to work the way we want. 

[Icemanau]

Bit late to the party but here's my opinion and thoughts...

First of all, ACADE comes with a standard library of blocks for most schematic styles which just so happens to include the P&ID symbols in their own library. So unless you use completely non standard symbols, you should find a set that will work for you. ACADE can use the P&ID symbols to do the P&ID dwgs properly and even allow them to be connected to your schematics so a change in one will reflect in the other.

One thing to note is that ACADE uses specific attributes within the blocks to do a lot of the smart functions. MEP blocks won't have those specific attributes and will not work with electrical properly.

Secondly, ACADE was designed to do the schematics first, then the panel layouts. It's a lot harder to go the other way. This is why there is a method to insert footprint blocks from a list of the schematic components.

Third, for terminals, there is a nifty little function that works most of the time called the Terminal Strip Editor (or TSE) which will allow you to select a terminal strip by it's specific identifier. It will then pull all instances of terminals in that strip from the schematic dwgs, assemble them and allow you to modify them within a certain limit. You can even add spare terminals and other components like the clamps, end plates and so on.

The TSE can insert a graphical representation of the terminal strip or one of two different tables depending on your needs. Note that the TSE does some things in a weird manner and does not always work well with other segments of ACADE.

Overall, ACADE is designed for schematics and control panels while I believe MEP is designed for building layouts and similar. Do note that ACADE has specific commands do do things which should be used rather than the normal ACAD commands. This is because the ACADE commands update the scratch database as it goes while the normal ACAD commands don't. This means that you HAVE TO USE  the specific commands for ACADE or you will end up having more problems than not. It's also advisable to check with your reseller for any courses on using ACADE that they might be running.

The best advice I can give you is to speak to your reseller and ask for a trial version for you to try things on. Maybe have one of the reps come out to your company for a couple of days to sit down and go through things with you and whoever makes the purchasing decisions.

Regards Brad

[ccad2509]

simple answer no ACADE is not the tool for you

it dosent do loops (i use a $50 lisp routine) to convert spreedsheet to loops

your getting your initial P&ID from a third party so unless they use ACADE to generate thier P&ID then youve got majour issues automating your process

backplate to schematics conversion  ACADE dosnt do that well

Terminal Strip Editor Is a crock of S"*T that dosnt work very well

unless you prepared to spend big bucks (and thats siemans Cosmos  will do exactly what you want in the same work flow)

my advice do some research and get some small Lisp routines to do some simple steps to to semi automate your work flow

i.e

you can extract Data from p&id symbols  to spreedsheet

modify your spreedsheet

spreed sheet to loop generating using a lisp routine

spreedsheet to backplate can be achived in a similar way to get your backplate layouts

some  work using excell and  vlookup can generate loops and terminal blocks/ cable schedules

all can be mapped back into a autocad drawing using spreedsheet to dwg creation

you can even cut out autodesk and go with a autocad clone that uses lisp and there is a very good one for a fraction of the price