AutoCAD Electrical workflow similar to Inventor

[Anonymous]

At my previous employer, my emphasis was mechanical design with Autodesk Inventor. I was pleased with the ease of workflow from beginning of project to end. When I changed to electrical CAD work months ago, I got my feet wet with AutoCAD Electrical heavily (no more Inventor). AutoCAD Electrical (2015) is a great tool, and has helped us and our customers tremendously. And yes, there is always room for improvement. ACADE just seems more clunky than Inventor overall. Admittedly, I'm still green when it comes to ACADE. A couple of examples:

1I (Inventor): Update a model with the parameter needed, then open the idw. The dimension updates automatically.

1E (Electrical): Stretch a line & retag the extension line (if you did not grab certain entities). It does not always play nice.

2I: Title block updates are universal, and happen right after the modification has occured.

2E: Go to title block update function and select exactly what fields to update and others not to update.

3I: File types, ipt (model), asm (assembly), and idw (drawing).

3E: File type dwg. Perhaps the schematic, panel layouts, and BOMs would benefit greater from attributes (aka Inventor parameters) passing. This one is more of a stretch.

Like I stated, I really do like the Electrical product, and I remember thinking the same between "Inventor" circa 2001 versus 2009. Seems like Electrical is on the path of developing into an easier product to use.

Ryan Gerstner

CAD Operator

The Industrial Controls Company

[Icemanau]

This can be done already in electrical. You just need to associate the dimension to the graphics in question. If the dimension is not associated, you get what you have noted.

To use Associated dimensions type DIMASSOC and set it to 2

It should be noted that plain ACAD commands do not tend to work well with electrical and it is recommended to always use ACADE commands where they exist.

For your second item with the Title Block Update, you may not want ALL the entries on a drawing to update.

For example, your project might have several smaller sections inside of it with different project descriptions for that section along with the drawing descriptions. Dates and names might be different for different dwgs and so on.

It's for this reason that we can pick which attributes in the title block can be updated.

Finally, the IPT, ASM and IDW file associations are to do with 3D modelling and are specific to that function and type of drawing.

ACADE is designed in such a way that users without electrical can open it, make changes (ie Mark Ups) and save it again.

To allow that, it has to retain the DWG file format.

Currently there are ways to export data from ACADE to Inventor and the reverse, but as I don't use Inventor, I can't comment on them.

Regards Brad

[ccad2509]

The sad thing here is that it will be probably implemented as stated the original poster started out as mechanical and is using his mechanical knowledge to be implemented in an electrical world

which is just what Autodesk is doing using its mechanical knowledge and trying to fit it into an electrical world

this is one of the reasons it has issues

stop thinking Mechanical see what all the electrical packages are doing maybe you will grow you market outside the USA rather than being the butt of many jokes

[Anonymous]

Brad,

Thanks for the feedback. Your points make sense and are logical. With regard to ACADE and Inventor, we do not use parts between both programs. We use parts that were either drawn in ACAD or ACADE.

Ccad2509,

My goal is to provide feedback on the ACADE product to make it a valuable tool for all ACADE users. I am but 1 user, and I do not expect AutoCAD to bend to one user's need (mine). I do too understand that electrical world is different than mechanical. But the two worlds have to work together for successful customer implementation. That is my goal. ACADE is a tool to help me get there.

With regards to product improvement, talk to any mechanical designer, and they will tell you the Inventor product has made tremendous improvements in the last 10 years. My message is that I would like to see tremendous improvements in the ACADE product. Let me be clear, I am not suggesting Autodesk turn ACADE into Inventor.

Ryan Gerstner

CAD Operator

The Industrial Controls Company

[ccad2509]

Hello Ryan

As they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions you need to understand the fundamental logic of the management at Autodesk unless you ideas fall into place with their long term plans it’s going to be pretty much ignored

politely but it will be ignored 

Major case in point Autodesk seems hell bent on ignoring existing bugs in the software and pilling new features on top of faulty software

I’m not a programmer but putting more code on top of software that has been proven to be faulty (and for a number of years) is scary and only alienating their users

While Autodesk was intent in driving a stake through the heart of promis e it ignored Eplan who now have 10 dedicated offices in the states (how many dedicated Acade officers are there in the us) and they have managed to get it working the way you want in inventor back in 2010

Want to see the proof well look here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IZh_2UY0T8

And Eplan has broken out of its niche market and is everywhere now

but on the plus side we did get the intelligent pdf converter last year and it lasted almost a week before it was proven to be faulty (that’s

a bit embarrassing making a big issue about a feature that doesn’t work properly)

This year they learnt their lesson but again the big idea they are pushing this year was wait for it in Eplan 1.8 and Wscad 6 a number of years ago so i leave you to work out what that feature was

So year in year out things don’t get fixed the price goes up again and Acade is not making any inroads with catching up with the leaders in innovation in the market

But that’s ok our users are loyal and wont jump ship (well they hope so)

A perfect Storm is building at Autodesk

Year in year out price hikes is alienating small businesses

Eplan is bitting great big chucks out of the market Acade market share worldwide (but not in the states yet )

A lot of very serious people and companies don’t like the way Autodesk is running towards a cloud solution

secure they claim

well the acknowledged masters of the cloud apple get hacked so do you want your companies proprietary secrets on a third party server better still if you’re a defence contractor is your government going to let you use cloud enabled software?

so which countries a waitting to hack thoose servers  and do you honestly belive if the US goverment asks Autodesk to supply data from a foreign company cloud storage they not going to comply?

And to top it all there no next new big thing to drive the customers crazy markets now fully matured in the devlope world

But don’t worry the shareholders expect those massive dividends driven by massive growth during the boom years

What possibly could go wrong ?

yes its another rant by me but prove me wrong 

[ccad2509]

i also forgot to mention in Autodesks own publication they are forecasting 20% increase per customer (here comes the price hike for little or no return) which drives the 5 year model even more here in Europe (run an Autocad application without subscription for 5 years and then buy a new one and pray that a competitor doesn't come along with an Acade to xxxx converter and sells their product cheaper )