Terminal Strip Editor Multi-Level Association Issues
First thing, these drawings are fine, they don't look like they were put together by a noob. So we'll start off by giving you some credit. I think what's really happening here is you just don't how to get to the place where you want to be. Don't feel like the Lone Ranger, we've all been in that spot at one time or another. Especially with the terminal strip editor.
Second, what you're trying to create here is called a terminal strip. Yours will have a total of twenty terminal blocks. Each block will have four terminals. These distinctions are important as you search for help, to ensure that you're getting the assistance you need. So, not just saying that to be pedantic, lol.
From your drawings, everything looks correct to me. The footprints have the correct attributes, and they seem to be functioning properly. Although we don't have enough schematic drawings to recreate your terminal strip, the drawing you did post appears to also be correctly made.
When you say you are trying to 'map each of those wires to their appropriate point on the terminal block', are you trying to: A) show this in the layout drawing; B) connect them 'electrically' in the software; or C) both?
Keep in mind that you don't have much ability to make edits to terminals or terminal blocks from within the terminal strip editor. You can add ones that don't exist yet, and pretty much modify those all you want, but if any terminal already exists in a schematic somewhere, you won't be able to edit it beyond changing its associations. This is because the data carried by the terminal is driven by the schematic drawings.
Jim Seefeldt
Electrical Engineering Technician
Accepted solution
I don't think there are any tutorials to help you with this, but not for the reasons you're probably expecting.
First thing: drawing terminal strips in the panel layout before drawing them in the schematic.......
I don't think there is a way to create a terminal strip and then back-feed its data to the schematic in any meaningful way. If it can be done at all, it would take a LOT of work. You can do that with any other type of footprint, but doing it with terminal blocks would be extremely labor intensive. IF it's even possible.
That said, I've drawn terminal strips first, at times. BUT...only to figure out how big of a panel to purchase. I still ended up going back and creating my terminal strips after drawing the terminals in the schematics. Unless someone chimes in with a good workflow for this, I wouldn't waste much time on trying to figure out how to push terminal data out of the layout drawings and into the schematics.
Second thing: making 'electrical' connections in the drawings:
This can be done, and in fact is done all the time with terminals. I, however, don't do this as I am the only decent CAD person here and it's a lot of work. So I can offer some general guidelines but by no means should you just run with this as I present it here. (A forum search on this specific thing should return lots of hits...)
Essentially, jumpers for terminal blocks are represented in two ways.
The first is in the panel layout, and what I often see is simply a dark line with filled-in dots or squares at each terminal included in that jumper. (The terminal strip editor shows this too but I don't think that there is a way to display it in the panel layout. You'd have to draw them manually.)
The second is in the schematics, where you would draw actual wires to indicate the jumpers. When doing this, the wires must be placed on a layer with the word 'JUMPER' in its name. This keeps ACADE from wanting to look at them when you do drawing- or project-wide wire tag updates, Wire To-From reports, etc.
OK, with all that said, what you're doing in this panel is very common: You've got some 24V DC control power, and you're distributing it to several devices/components, via multi-level terminals. Because of the external jumpers that will physically be inserted into the terminals, the real-world picture here is, you will land two wires onto that terminal strip from your distribution -- one 24V and one 0V. The jumpers do the rest. Everything else landing on that terminal strip is from some device somewhere needing power: a PLC module, ethernet switch, etc.
Yet, when we go look at the schematic drawings, we will see each terminal symbol with two wires on it: one going to the device, and one going to distribution. That would indicate that there should be 24V and 0V distribution wires all over the place in the panel. But, we know that only one of each will physically land on the terminals. This is why you have to use a 'JUMPER' layer -- we are showing wires in the schematic that don't physically exist in the real world.
My solution for all of this is maybe a little unorthodox... Remember, the dots that appear where wires intersect have a purpose: they actually depict a connection between two different wires. Although the symbol is a dot, it can represent a multitude of things ... Solder joints. Wire nuts. Butt splices. Inline crimps. Terminals.
I am so very fortunate to work with electricians who understand this, and who know how to read prints.
So! I typically only show terminals in a few select spots, and when drawing the terminal strip later, I will simply add the correct number of spares I need to accommodate the rest of my distribution, assign the correct wire number, and be done with it. I only do this with distribution, and the goal for distribution terminal blocks is to depict as few as possible in the schematic drawings. Example:
Refer to the two attached images.
The first shows a typical 24V drawing for me. Note the terminal strip on the right-side ladder called 24V-MCPL. Note that it encompasses a bunch of 24V distribution. Sometimes, a wire number only goes to one place, as is the case with the R1 AENTR signal. (This is a power wire to a remote I/O controller in Rack 1.) But, farther down we see 'MCP IN PWR' and 'MCP OUT PWR', and these go to multiple places. (In fact, what we see there are input power and output power, at 24V DC, and depending on what a device does it will draw from one or the other. So, an input module needing 24V would grab from 'IN PWR' while an output module would grab its voltage from 'OUT PWR'. Also, any field devices that need small levels of power can pull from these.)
The terminals you see on that drawing are the only ones in the whole schematic for that wire number, even though in the layout we would see like 5-10 of each.
Now, look at the other image I posted, called IO Example. On the left, you'll see where I bring in 24V input power, along with 0V DC, and as we move down the page you'll see where these are distributed to a pair of contacts, an individual wire in a multiconductor cable, and then several prox switches. Note the absence of any terminals for that distributed power, on this drawing at least. I just let the wire dots speak for me. All of our panel builders, even the ones that aren't electricians by trade, know how this works.
This may not be suitable for everyone. But, this is how I manage to depict power distribution without going crazy trying to draw things 'real world' style. YMMV
Jim Seefeldt
Electrical Engineering Technician
I do things a little different than Jim. I do show all the jumpers in the schematic. In fact, I show every terminal. I developed a method of drawing jumpers so that they standout from the regular wires. I draw all jumpers attached perpendicular to wire flow. For example, if the wires are horizontal, I have the jumpers attach vertically. I also show the attachment at a 45 degree angle to further make them stand apart from the wire.
I also show the "internal" jumpers of a multitier terminal to show that they have the same potential. The magenta lines are on "Jumper*" layers so that they will not appear in From/To lists.
The terminals connected by the internal jumper are associated so that they are the same terminal block.
Brad, if things ever get to the point where I have to depict jumpers schematically I am totally stealing your whole workflow lol
I like how you visually show that a wire is a jumper by angling its connection to the terminal, and use linetypes to differentiate between internal & external jumpers.
Jim Seefeldt
Electrical Engineering Technician
I like how you visually show that a wire is a jumper by angling its connection to the terminal, and use linetypes to differentiate between internal & external jumpers.
Jim Seefeldt
Electrical Engineering Technician
It's Bob by the way.
Whoops! I thought I checked to see who I was replying to first, my bad.
#fourthmonday, lol
Jim Seefeldt
Electrical Engineering Technician
