Valvestacks in ACADE

[drew_dewit]

I am looking for example of how people handle both the electrical representation and pneumatic representation of valvestacks in Autocad Electrical. Does anyone have any great example of how they do this that I can reference.?

[jseefdrumr]

Um. Are you drawing the pneumatic schematics as well as the electrical schematics?

Also, what is the type of interface to the valve stack? Ethernet, multiconductor cable, etc.

[drew_dewit]

Yes both electrical and pneumatic schematics.

Most likely Ethernet. We typically use SMC SY series or Numatics 2012 series.

[jseefdrumr · Accepted solution]

If it's Ethernet, I'm not sure you really have to show much on the electrical schematics beyond connecting it to some 24V DC or whatever it needs. I don't have any examples, but there are two ways I would do this, outlined below.

If you need to use a multiconductor cable, I have pretty good examples of that but they travel across a few drawings. PM me for those. I'll have to scrub them first but I don't mind.

(We use MAConnect, which utilizes a 25-pin Sub-D connector. I have to lay out a cable and connector drawing, and then use the 'fan in-fan out source/destination' function to send the wires to their locations on the I/O sheets. For me, interfacing to the valve stack is usually a bit of a chore. I'm jealous)

On the pneumatics, I have very few components that share tags with the electrical schematics. Also, lots of the pneumatics I'm documenting already exist in our Mechanical group's drawings, and have had names and tags applied. So, I don't use the peer-to-peer functionality, I just fix the tags to be what is needed. We are just now getting into taking over the pneumatic documentation from our Mechanical group, and so our pneumatic drawings are pretty infantile, lol. We plan to eventually start using peer-to-peer and integrating the pneumatics into our electrical stuff more thoroughly. As it is, though, I sometimes have to shoehorn an existing name or tag into what I'm drawing, so until it all comes totally under the control of the Electrical group I am stuck with fixing tags much of the time. You probably have more control over how you can do this aspect of it.

How I would lay out the Ethernet connection to the valve stack:
Option 1:
*Create a basic symbol and put it into your 24V distribution drawing(s). Call it the valve stack controller/interface. Show the Ethernet cable landing on it if that's how you do things. (We keep an Ethernet layout drawing, where we show everything on the network in one place. We don't show Ethernet connections to individual devices in the schematics.) Connect the symbol to your ladder and give it a circuit breaker, and that should be all you need.
*In the pneumatics, I'd again represent the valve stack controller as a custom symbol, and then send the pilot lines out to the valves or cylinders directly from that symbol. Or, if the drawing is busy, I'd use source/destination arrows to keep from having too many crossing lines.

Option 2:
*In my 24V distribution drawings, I would throw out source arrows and label them for the valve stack controller.
*In my pneumatics, I would build a custom symbol to represent the valve stack controller and then use destination arrows to connect it to 24V and 0V. Again, showing Ethernet landing here is up to you. Drawing the pilot lines to the valves or cylinders would go as noted above.

Personally, I like the second option because it only needs me to create one custom symbol.

As for depicting the actual valve stack in the pneuamtics, in my stuff I actually just based it on a manifold symbol. The attached drawing shows this, along with how I had to use source/destination signals to depict the pilot air circuits.

Hope this helps,