UL/CSA symbols. JIC or IEC?

[Anonymous]

We have a customer who wants us to produce drawings as per UL/CSA norms.  Would those be JIC or IEC symbols?

[dougmcalexander]

I recommend that you use the NFPA library.  JIC is an old standard that was replaced by NFPA.  IEC is an International standard, a predecessor of the IEC standard.  Many North American companies will accept equipment designed according to the IEC standard,  but it sounds like your customer wants you to adhere to the UL-508A standard.  I worked for a company from Germany and we even sold our machinery to American customers under the DIN standard.  But of your customer requires that you meet UL-508A you will want to use the NFPA library of symbols.  The symbols feature the more up-to-date class designation letters from NFPA-79.  There are also a few more symbols available in the NFPA library than in the JIC library.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the reply.  I just loaded (used the icon menu wizard and selected ACE_NFPA_Menu.dat) up the NFPA symbol set into ACADE 2017 to take a look at the symbols and they look a lot like JIC.  I flipped through the usual ones, like pushbutton, relay coils and contacts, etc. and they all look the same.  Is my library wrong?

I tried loading the IEC symbols (since I know those look a little different).  The symbols in the icon menu look like like IEC, but when I select it and place it on the drawing, they look like JIC.  Am I missing something?

[dougmcalexander]

Be sure that you have your project properties set to the NFPA library folder and NFPA menu.

The JIC and NFPA symbol graphics are both from ANSI Y32.2. The class designation letters were updated in NFPA-79 and the NFPA library in AutoCAD Electrical reflects this update. The NFPA library also features extra symbols, like solid-state relay, heater, form-c relay contact, LED, bridge rectifier, DC power supply.

There was a typographical error in my previous post. DIN is a predecessor of IEC. But again, for your scenario NFPA makes more sense.

If you want to learn more about the electrical standards supported by AutoCAD Electrical I cover this topic on the Tips and Tricks page at www.ecadconsultant.com.

[Anonymous]

I tried the IEC symbols and I figured it out.  The order in which you call the schematic libraries is important.  I placed the IEC.dat files to the top and I can now pull the IEC icons.  But they are so big!  How do I pull them so they are smaller?  What's the correct scaling for this?

[jseefdrumr]

Remember, IEC is metric. There are settings for changing the scale of symbols, but if you're going to use the IEC symbols you may want to just make a new, bigger title block for this one.

FYI, metric to standard is .03937. Standard to metric is 25.4.

Jim

[dougmcalexander]

You can set your project properties to IEC as the menu and NFPA as the library folder. You can do this in reverse as well. This trick allows you to choose from icon images you are familiar with, yet insert actual symbols from an alternate library. You see, the block names (i.e. filename minus extension) are the same in all library folders. The icon menu simply directs which block name to insert from the assigned folder. That's why the alternate library trick works. Note however that there about twice as many symbols in IEC as there are ANSI/NFPA, so there isn't always an alternate.

Also keep in mind that the IEC symbols are in metric dimensions so they must be scaled by 0.03937 if inserted into an ANSI D-size drawing. If inserting NFPA symbols into an A3 or A4 size metric drawing scale by 25.4.

There is one other thing you must be mindful of. Remember how AutoCAD retains blocks in the drawing even if they are all deleted? Electrical does this as well. So, if you have previously inserted a pushbutton symbol from NFPA and later select one from IEC, you will still get the NFPA version. This is because AutoCAD economizes by first searching the drawing for the block, to avoid searching a hard drive. This dates back to the 1980s releases of AutoCAD. Pulling a block from an open drawing (in RAM) is quicker than searching a hard drive. Electrical will act the same. Even if the block was deleted previously, AutoCAD/Electrical will find a copy of it, hidden in the drawing, and it will use it. You could use AutoCAD Purge to rid the drawing of unused blocks, prior to inserting new ones, but I recommend that you use the purge option in Project > Utilities. Unless you are very careful, AutoCAD Purge might delete necessary layers used by Electrical. But even better than Purge is the Update Block utility. It will force a refresh of all blocks in the drawing with the latest version from the library folder.

[dougmcalexander]

I normally recommend one standard or the other for a project. But if you want to select from the IEC menu yet wish to use NFPA symbols, place the NFPA folder first in the list. Place IEC after NFPA and when an NFPA equivalent symbol doesn't exist, the software will use the IEC version.

I would recommend using the Modify Symbol Library utility to prescale a copy of the IEC library folder symbols by 0.03937 so they insert into an ANSI drawing at the proper size. I copied my IEC folder and named it IEC_03937. I then used the Modify Symbol Library utility to scale everything in the folder by 0.03937. Note that this could take a couple of hours or more, depending upon your computer hardware.

[Anonymous]

NEMA