I know this isn't exactly supported at the moment, but I have had several customers ask for this. This applies to what is known as a configurable product line, where you produce variations of the same basic design (a same-as-but scenario). The "pie in the sky" wish is that someone creates a schematic, panel layout, BOM and Wire From/To List that includes all possible options. When they receive the order for a particular variation of the design, they turn off schematic layers (circuits) that are not needed and AutoCAD Electrical removes the associated panel footprint from the panel layout, and updates the BOM and Wire From/To List accordingly, without any additional human interaction.
The way customers are handling this with plain “Vanilla” AutoCAD is that option circuits, including components and wires, are placed on a layer that is named according to the function of that option circuit. So they turn off an option circuit’s layer and plot the drawings. Since the circuits are not visible on the drawings they do not appear in the plots. Of course, they have to turn off the associated footprints as well, and they have to manually update the BOM and Wire From/To List.
I have handled this by placing each option circuit inside a location box and when I generate reports I filter my BOM and Wire From/To List to not include those location codes and thus the wires and components are removed from the reports. Of course what some customers do not like is the fact that the circuits and footprints still appear in the drawings. Some customers are okay with it, realizing that the location box denotes that this circuit is optional and is shown for reference purposes. But some will not accept this method, and do no want to delete anything from the circuit. I have explained Project Copy and edit, but they do not accept this. The customer I met with today is considering staying with plain AutoCAD because of this limitation.
Since wires and symbols are assigned to specific layers in AutoCAD Electrical we cannot simply turn layers on and off, because we will be turning off all wires of that type and all symbols. Of course if the customer was willing to place such circuits on a dedicated page for each optional circuit, these drawings could be removed temporarily, or set to Reference Only, and the reports would adjust accordingly. However, if the BOM is generated from the panel layout, the footprints would still be there. But alas, these customers do not want to put these circuits on separate drawings anyway. It might be one sensor circuit tied to a PLC I/O point and they only want to “turn off” the wires, terminals, limit switch, proximity sensor, etc. that connect to the PLC for that one sensor circuit, leaving the PLC and all other discrete I/O devices visible.
So there is presently no fully automated way to just tell AutoCAD Electrical that this particular circuit is not needed, make the component symbols and wires invisible, including the associated footprint(s), update the BOM and Wire From/To List to reflect this, and AutoCAD Electrical, do this automatically without me having to do anything but tell you to turn off this circuit.
I know this is “pie in the sky” but perhaps you could think of a way to use the location box and location codes to help with this. I would envision a special list, ordered by location code, that allows the user to uncheck the box next to Each location code, thus making all wires and component symbols inside the perimeter of the location box turn invisible, update the visibility of the related footprint, remove their data from the project scratch database, and then run the Automatic Reports to update the BOM and Wire From/To List.
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