Numbering terminals varies wildly from company to company, but all follow a similar pattern. The normal method is to start at '1' and number left to right or top to bottom depending if the terminal rail is horizontal or vertical. However some want also to show the internal and external connection, which is useful to the panel wiring team. It becomes slightly more complex when numbering multi-level terminals. Companies want to identify not only each terminal and the connection side, but the level too. Different companies have worked out different methods of doing this and all are effective for their purposes. The method I've chosen for this idea is simple effective, each terminal in a terminal rail is numbered uniquely 1,2,3,4.... etc. the levels are identified with T,M,L and the internal/external connections identified A & B respectively. I order to show this on the schematic I use the attributes available within the terminal symbol, namely 'X1PIN01, X2PIN01, X4PIN01 & X8PIN01', a simple adjustment using the symbol editor makes the relevant attribute is positioned appropriately. For the purpose of the company I work for we only draw schematics in horizontal ladder format, so we only need the X2PIN01 & X8PIN01 attributes as these are the top and bottom connection points. When using the tool to mark internal/external connections it adds the relevant letter to the attribute X#TERMDESC01 depending on where you click around the terminal symbol, 'I' for the internal and 'E' for external. So for my purposes I click top or bottom of the symbol depending on which is the internal or external connection point. This then shows in the schematic as the terminal number and the letter 'A' in the internal side and 'B' on the external side. For multi-level terminals, I use 'TA', 'TB' for the top level, 'MA', 'MB' for the middle level and simply 'A', 'B' for the bottom level (See attached picture). This all works well until you come to use the terminal rail renumber tool in the terminal strip editor. When renumbering the terminals you are given the option to number 'Per Terminal' or 'Per Level'. this may seem perfect, but it is not so, if you select 'Per Terminal' you would expect it to number each level in each terminal with the same number, as terminal 1 has 3 levels, but it is still one terminal so therefore should have the same sequential number, but no! AutoCAD Electrical numbers each level uniquely. This causes confusion to the panel wiring team, because it's not clear which symbol belongs to which terminal. I have talked to Autodesk and they say that it is working as designed, I see the way AutoCAD Electrical is working for this as incorrect, and I blame the fact that the software engineers are not electrical engineers so are oblivious to how it should work. As it stands, I am forced to renumber all the terminals manually, which when there are hundreds of terminals in a rail, it takes a ridiculous amount of time.
