Using ACADE with 3D Panel Building Software
All we do is industrial controls, and we can't see a benefit in laying out our panels to that degree. However, we're a smaller company, with our own in-house electricians and panel builders. We don't mass-produce machines, and often, each one is subtly different than the last one of that model we built. In fact, we do many one-off, unique machines. So I have to also say that our size and the nature of our work don't really lend themselves well to that level of documentation and cost control. But we reached the same conclusion as you: Inventor Cable & Harness isn't an effective tool for electrical design.
I've never worked with anyone in my industry who actually tries to model cable runs in 3D. Usually, the machines we see our competitors make have lots of service loops and such hanging all over the place, so you know they're just ordering long cables and looping the excess. (Even in the panels, some of them. Not us though.) I wouldn't be surprised if most people did it that way, unless their product is going out at some big volume.
We briefly discussed trying to implement the Inventor-Electrical Cable & Harness interface, but we concluded that it would cost more to do that, than to just order the cables a little too long and trim what we don't need. Literally, the cost of the cables is less than the cost of paying one of our techs to model the cable runs for every machine. (That could be different, if we built more than 3 of any one thing. Or made it the same exact way every time. But that's not how our industry is.) As far as the panels go, we don't use any that are bigger than about 8' x 8', so there's not much need to plan out cable runs. A panel builder can figure out how long the cable needs to be with a tape measure, or I can do it in a plain 3D drawing without involving Inventor. But again, it costs more to pay me to figure it out, than it does to just overestimate it a bit and eat the loss of the extra cable/wire.
Plus, when we scrap all the cable and wire trim, along with the metal shop's scrap, it usually buys a nice catered lunch for the whole crew.
Jim Seefeldt
Electrical Engineering Technician
I've never worked with anyone in my industry who actually tries to model cable runs in 3D. Usually, the machines we see our competitors make have lots of service loops and such hanging all over the place, so you know they're just ordering long cables and looping the excess. (Even in the panels, some of them. Not us though.) I wouldn't be surprised if most people did it that way, unless their product is going out at some big volume.
We briefly discussed trying to implement the Inventor-Electrical Cable & Harness interface, but we concluded that it would cost more to do that, than to just order the cables a little too long and trim what we don't need. Literally, the cost of the cables is less than the cost of paying one of our techs to model the cable runs for every machine. (That could be different, if we built more than 3 of any one thing. Or made it the same exact way every time. But that's not how our industry is.) As far as the panels go, we don't use any that are bigger than about 8' x 8', so there's not much need to plan out cable runs. A panel builder can figure out how long the cable needs to be with a tape measure, or I can do it in a plain 3D drawing without involving Inventor. But again, it costs more to pay me to figure it out, than it does to just overestimate it a bit and eat the loss of the extra cable/wire.
Plus, when we scrap all the cable and wire trim, along with the metal shop's scrap, it usually buys a nice catered lunch for the whole crew.
Jim Seefeldt
Electrical Engineering Technician
ccad,
Great points on why someone may need to actually use true 3D capability in an electrical application. The work we do here is a far cry from that and I would have been hard pressed to come up with even those examples. Clearly this is something you see a lot, lol.
For us, as I said, it's a simple calculus, a cost/benefit analysis. We don't need detailed data like that; ACADE works fine for what we do. But it's difficult for me to imagine that bigger, more major industries can get by with ACADE. Not by itself anyway. Especially with such woefully out-of-date catalog info.
Also, thanks for letting us know your research results. Others will come here with the same question and you've probably saved them some time.
Jim Seefeldt
Electrical Engineering Technician
Great points on why someone may need to actually use true 3D capability in an electrical application. The work we do here is a far cry from that and I would have been hard pressed to come up with even those examples. Clearly this is something you see a lot, lol.
For us, as I said, it's a simple calculus, a cost/benefit analysis. We don't need detailed data like that; ACADE works fine for what we do. But it's difficult for me to imagine that bigger, more major industries can get by with ACADE. Not by itself anyway. Especially with such woefully out-of-date catalog info.
Also, thanks for letting us know your research results. Others will come here with the same question and you've probably saved them some time.
Jim Seefeldt
Electrical Engineering Technician
I personally have no problem with modifying the catalog, but again our needs are simple. We use a narrow range of products and it's all easy for me to manage. Ditto for the symbols, but that's mainly because I've been working in ACAD-based software for this entire century.
We have a couple machines that, if we needed to build 50 of them, would make us take a much stronger interest in pathing out cables in the model. At quantities like that, we'd get back the investment in modeling time. I don't know what we'd do if that happened, but clearly we would do it in another software.
Jim Seefeldt
Electrical Engineering Technician
We have a couple machines that, if we needed to build 50 of them, would make us take a much stronger interest in pathing out cables in the model. At quantities like that, we'd get back the investment in modeling time. I don't know what we'd do if that happened, but clearly we would do it in another software.
Jim Seefeldt
Electrical Engineering Technician