Wiring diagrams for solar car

[Anonymous]

Hi, we are building a solar car for a Uni project and my team need to translate some existing wiring into schematics.

I'm new to AutoCAD electrical and my biggest concern at the moment is how to find components. For example, one module contains a C16-1 type socket, a microcontroller CANbus wiring......How do I search for all these components (had not much luck in the catalogue browser) to have a matching symbol in the drawing perhaps showing all the pins connections from where I can then run wires?

Thanks 

[JeffatPrimex]

Your going to have to create your own. Solar cars hum my guess is you'll be using connector feature cable feature plug/jack feature and for electronics the miscellaneous blocks menu.

Good luck with that.

Best regards,

Jeff

[jseefdrumr]

ACADE is really geared more towards electrical schematics for industrial machines...actually, it's almost specifically set up for that. It can be used for other applications, but not without some tweaking. And that level of tweaking is best done by someone familiar with the software.

I think the main problem for you is symbology, more than anything else. Things like microcontrollers, or automotive components like alternators, AC compressors, and even printed circuit boards aren't really in ACADE's wheelhouse.

The C16-1 socket you mentioned, however, is what most ACADE users would call a bulkhead connector. For things like that, you'd use the parametric connector tool. The software refers to all such connectors as 'plug/receptacle'.

So, you'd be looking at having to create many, if not most, of your own symbols. ACADE provides all the tools you need for that. Refer to HELP, and familiarize yourself with: symbol naming conventions; wire connection attributes; attribute templates. In short, in order to do automatic updates and manage project data, you need to know which attributes to put in your symbols (attribute templates), how to make wires connect (connection attributes), and how ACADE expects symbols to be named (naming conventions). Those are all searchable in HELP. Not doing any one of them correctly, can lead to problems with project data.

If you don't need ACADE to manage project data, then those things are less important...you could 'brute-force' things to make them work while losing the ability to extract info from your project via reports, or have it do project-wide commands like retag everything, or renumber all the wires. But then, you'd need to ask yourself why you're using ACADE to do something that can be done in ACAD LT.