When the schematics of an existing project are touched, it is often necessary to trigger update of the existing panel wiring diagrams. This is to make sure each connection on each wiring diagram symbol accurately maps back to the master connection list generated from the schematics.
AcadE gives great flexibility in allowing the user to define the format of this wiring diagram annotation. In fact, the user is free to assign one format on one footprint symbol and a slightly different format on another. One symbol might accept cable connections and the next one is just discrete wiring. The user might want to format the first one to include cable/core annotation and the second one to show just the wire number assignment.
This flexibility is supported for panel footprint symbols. The wire connection annotation format to use for the symbol, for example “%W (%2) %G”, is “remembered” on the symbol. It is stored as an Xdata value, tag name “VIA_WD_WXREF_FMT”. This works for the use-case of symbol with TERMxx/WIRENOxx attributes and for the use-case where the annotation is pushed on to a generic wiring diagram symbol in the form of an MTEXT paragraph of text.
When the user needs to update a wiring diagram symbol or a bunch of windowed symbols, the “Wire Annotation” command will examine each symbol for its annotation format Xdata value and then regenerate connection annotation per the symbol’s stored Xdata value.
Problem: the third use-case, panel graphical wiring diagram representations of Terminal Strips created by the Terminal Strip Editor tool, these do not appear to save the user’s selected annotation format as Xdata on the graphical terminal strip. The format appears to be pulled from the registry. Whatever format was last used by anyone on that machine when creating or editing a Terminal Strip on any project will be the format applied when the terminal strip is rebuilt using TSE.
Why a problem?: A user may have spent a lot of time with TSE carefully adjusting his smart wiring diagram terminal strip annotation, left side, right side, cable annotation on one side, discrete wire annotation on the other side. Now, later, when changes are made to the schematics and these affect the wiring diagrams, a wholesale update of the wiring diagram is in order. For regular footprint wiring diagram symbols, it is simple. Pick ‘em and they update per the original saved annotation format value. But, the TSE-smart terminal strips will not remember the carefully formatted annotation used when created. Whatever format was last used on the last project worked on is what will be used for the update. Why? Because the format for TSE-generated wiring diagram annotation is pulled from the registry. It is not stored with the symbol instance as xdata on the terminal strip’s first terminal.
Potentially big problem, but simple solution. Keep the registry values but save a copy of the actual used format as Xdata on TSE-generated terminal strips… just like what AcadE does for the other non-TSE wiring diagram footprints.
