Community
The angled wire setting inserts a symbol that appears as an angled wire connection. It is not the appropriate choice when you are so close to a symbol. It cannot connect directly to a symbol. But fortunately AcadE also allows you to conect more than one wire to a component terminal. You can simply click the Insert Wire command and place your mouse over the connection point of the terminal you wish to run a second wire from. AcadE will automatically start the second wire at a 45-degree angle. Optionally you can fly out the insert wire icon menu and select either 22.5, 67.5, or 45 degree wire angles. These are actual wire segments that insert at an angle. These are used specifically to connect more than one wire to a component terminal. If you want to show a wire angling into another wire at a midpoint, use the angled wire symbol. I find it much easier to default to dots and replace the dots with angled wire symbols where desired. If you fly out the Insert Dot Tee Markers icon to the second option (see attached) you can select to insert an angled tee marker. Insert exactly over the middle of a node dot and the dot gets replaced by the angled tee symbol. Press the space bar until you get the desired orientation. With version 2008 and later this orientation also sequences the wire list accordingly.
Doug McAlexander
Design Engineer/Consultant/Instructor/Mentor specializing in AutoCAD Electrical training and implementation support
Phone and Web-based Support Plans Available
Phone: (770) 841-8009
www.linkedin.com/in/doug-mcalexander-1a77623
Please Accept as Solution if I helped you. Likes are also much appreciated.
Doug McAlexander
Design Engineer/Consultant/Instructor/Mentor specializing in AutoCAD Electrical training and implementation support
Phone and Web-based Support Plans Available
Phone: (770) 841-8009
www.linkedin.com/in/doug-mcalexander-1a77623
Please Accept as Solution if I helped you. Likes are also much appreciated.
I'm not sure what you are referring to. A straight line problem? What is it that you want to avoid? I have used the competitors and I find AutoCAD Electrical to be very strong and flexible with regard to managing wires. You are not limited to using snap, but you can if you wish. I do. You can use either dots or angles or both as desired. You can replace dots anytime you wish. You can connect two wires to the same connection point, just like the real world. You can use regular AutoCAD line commands to run your wires or you can use the AutoCAD Electrical smart tools. People at Autodesk can tell you that I don't give them a free pass. I voice concern where I see an issue, but managing wires with AutoCAD Electrical has not been an area I would consider as a weakness.
Doug McAlexander
Design Engineer/Consultant/Instructor/Mentor specializing in AutoCAD Electrical training and implementation support
Phone and Web-based Support Plans Available
Phone: (770) 841-8009
www.linkedin.com/in/doug-mcalexander-1a77623
Please Accept as Solution if I helped you. Likes are also much appreciated.
Doug McAlexander
Design Engineer/Consultant/Instructor/Mentor specializing in AutoCAD Electrical training and implementation support
Phone and Web-based Support Plans Available
Phone: (770) 841-8009
www.linkedin.com/in/doug-mcalexander-1a77623
Please Accept as Solution if I helped you. Likes are also much appreciated.
I think you must have me confused with someone from Autodesk. I am not an Autodesk employee. I just happen to have been using the program since 1997, along with a couple of others. I don't disagree with you on some points. I too think too much time is spent on new features and not enough on enhancements to existing features.
As far as the stretch wire command, all of the things you wish for can be done with standard AutoCAD commands like stretch, extend, etc. Why not use them since you are already familiar with them? All that makes a line a wire is the fact that it is assigned to a wire layer. You can insert and manipulate wires using the standard AutoCAD line tool and editing tools. The stretch wire command is a command I asked for back in the 1990s. I intended to pick the command and then pick the wire I wanted to stretch and finally click the component terminal I wanted to stretch it to. The developers gave it a bit more horsepower by allowing it to search for a component wire connection with no wire and make the connection without any extra mouse clicks by the user. It is simply an intelligent form of the extend command that doesn't require us to pick the extend to entity. It knows to look for an open wire connection or even a wire end that happens to be in the same plane as the wire that is being stretched. Beyond those scenarios why not just use standard AutoCAD commands that you already know and love.
You can renumber terminal strips project-wide using the Terminal Strip Utilities under the Project pull-down menu.
Doug McAlexander
Design Engineer/Consultant/Instructor/Mentor specializing in AutoCAD Electrical training and implementation support
Phone and Web-based Support Plans Available
Phone: (770) 841-8009
www.linkedin.com/in/doug-mcalexander-1a77623
Please Accept as Solution if I helped you. Likes are also much appreciated.
As far as the stretch wire command, all of the things you wish for can be done with standard AutoCAD commands like stretch, extend, etc. Why not use them since you are already familiar with them? All that makes a line a wire is the fact that it is assigned to a wire layer. You can insert and manipulate wires using the standard AutoCAD line tool and editing tools. The stretch wire command is a command I asked for back in the 1990s. I intended to pick the command and then pick the wire I wanted to stretch and finally click the component terminal I wanted to stretch it to. The developers gave it a bit more horsepower by allowing it to search for a component wire connection with no wire and make the connection without any extra mouse clicks by the user. It is simply an intelligent form of the extend command that doesn't require us to pick the extend to entity. It knows to look for an open wire connection or even a wire end that happens to be in the same plane as the wire that is being stretched. Beyond those scenarios why not just use standard AutoCAD commands that you already know and love.
You can renumber terminal strips project-wide using the Terminal Strip Utilities under the Project pull-down menu.
Doug McAlexander
Design Engineer/Consultant/Instructor/Mentor specializing in AutoCAD Electrical training and implementation support
Phone and Web-based Support Plans Available
Phone: (770) 841-8009
www.linkedin.com/in/doug-mcalexander-1a77623
Please Accept as Solution if I helped you. Likes are also much appreciated.
I've had the same issue with the leading dash coming an going. It happens more with project-wide retag. I even set some symbol tags to Fixed and still lost the leading dash during a retag. It seemed random though because it didn't happen to all components; not even all component families. It is very troublesome.
Doug McAlexander
Design Engineer/Consultant/Instructor/Mentor specializing in AutoCAD Electrical training and implementation support
Phone and Web-based Support Plans Available
Phone: (770) 841-8009
www.linkedin.com/in/doug-mcalexander-1a77623
Please Accept as Solution if I helped you. Likes are also much appreciated.
Doug McAlexander
Design Engineer/Consultant/Instructor/Mentor specializing in AutoCAD Electrical training and implementation support
Phone and Web-based Support Plans Available
Phone: (770) 841-8009
www.linkedin.com/in/doug-mcalexander-1a77623
Please Accept as Solution if I helped you. Likes are also much appreciated.
The error here, and most times when people have problems with wire behavior, lies in the expectations of the user. It seems like you're thinking that you only have to click twice, once at each endpoint of the wire, and ACADE will do the rest. Unfortunately, that's only true up to a small and very limited point.
You should manually click to add bends in the wire, so that when you approach the symbol with the wire tool it's already in line with the symbol. This greatly helps the software make the connections automatically.
In your video, it's hard to tell, but it looks like you hit the 'X' key to see your wire connection points but when you clicked the mouse to accept the wire, it was closer to the left one. Remember that the wire will try to terminate on the connection point closest to where you clicked. If you're using grid snaps, this can throw things off, so I'd check those too.
And also, if you elect to draw wires using the line command, you won't lose any sort of functionality at all -- you'll just not be drawing wires with the wire tool. To do that successfully, all you have to do is have a wire layer current, use the LINE command, and draw your wire. Anything that is: 1) a line entity, and 2) on a wire layer, is a wire. You don't need to use the wire tool at all, so long as you remember to NOT use polylines or arcs, and so long as you're drawing on an actual wire layer. Any wires you draw this way will still be addressed by automatic wire number tools, updates, etc.
Jim Seefeldt
Electrical Engineering Technician
Check your dwg scale & unit settings...
Some of the times ACADE does this, the units or scale are set wrong.
Type Units and make sure the dwg is using the correct setting for measurement.
Then check your project & dwg properties to see if everything is set right there.
Regards Brad
>
Brad Coleman, Electrical Draftsman
Did you find this post helpful? Feel free to Like this post.
Did your question get successfully answered? Then click on the ACCEPT SOLUTION button.
First: Keep in mind that it's not just the layer the wire is on, but whether or not that layer is listed as a Wire Type, along with what type of entity makes up the wire. Only a LINE can be a wire. Not a polyline, arc segment, etc. This means that if you are manually drawing wire crossing arcs, ACADE won't be able to recognize anything on the other side of the arc as being the same wire. (When ACADE inserts those wire crossing arcs, it writes some data into the drawing's DB so that it knows where the wire ended/starts back up. Wire data can't carry across the arc because arcs aren't lines.)
Next: When you try to add a number to an invalid wire using the automatic wire number command, there should be a return on the command line that says something along the lines of 'entities found: 0'. If you click on a wire, and no wire number appears, AND you see that phrase on the command line, then there is something about that line that is making it not be recognized as a wire by the software. Make sure the layer that it's on is a valid Wire Type (verify using the Create/Edit Wire Type tool), and make sure it's not a polyline.
On your specific example of editing a wire only to see a different wire's number get changed, this may be due to a component symbol. If the symbol is set up to not have the wire number change as it passes through the component, then this can happen. Can you post a drawing where this is happening?
Moving on, I can't duplicate any of this wire tool behavior at all, no matter which settings I mess with. This implies to me that perhaps you just have something wrong with your installation of the software. I think you should do the following, checking in between each step to see if anything has changed:
1. try a Reset to Defaults...this is usually found in the start menu
2. perform a Repair on your ACADE installation....go through the motions as if you're going to uninstall, and this option pops up along the way
3. perform a reinstall
Remember to back up any customization files you have, in case you have to reinstall.
Jim Seefeldt
Electrical Engineering Technician
Another thing I have come across that can cause the problems with the wires going odd angles is a stub or zero length wire on the component.
Run the drawing audit and see if it picks up any wires like that.
Also, you said you checked the scales and units of the dwg, but what about the Feature Scale Multiplier.
This should always be set to 1 or between .25 of either side of it.
This is used to slightly adjust things when inserting and such. If you need to scale the blocks, do so at the Insert Component menu.
Regards Brad
>
Brad Coleman, Electrical Draftsman
Did you find this post helpful? Feel free to Like this post.
Did your question get successfully answered? Then click on the ACCEPT SOLUTION button.
Forums Links
Can't find what you're looking for? Ask the community or share your knowledge.
Post to forums
