Designers need to have many software options at their disposal when developing a product. Their choices must work together efficiently to develop a quality product, in a practical and cost effective way. AutoCAD electrical (ACADE) is a must have tool for any designer. It has not only the ability to intelligently develop a product, it can also easily share design data with other software packages.
AutoCAD Electrical (ACADE) is amazing software. It has the ability to design a product at all levels, from the schematic to the final assembly of a product. When used with other Autodesk applications, there is no limit to what can be done.
ACADE is very powerful, creating clear and accurate drawings to support product development. However, if the resulting data from these drawings is not available to a design team for other applications to take advantage of, it is not worth the effort to create them.
A core tool in the ACADE arsenal is the ability to generate reports. The data set created when developing a drawing package is a valuable commodity. It contains bill of material (BOM) data as well as component wiring data that is easily exported to various teams within an organization. The use of this data, directly extracted from the core design, insures accuracy and efficiency of work done in completion of a design project.
Accurate schematic data is critical at many levels. Panel builders need an efficient way to create wire and cable labels as well as proper device tags, to identify components on a back panel. If this data is entered manually by shop personnel, the risk of typing errors is always present. Manually entered data is inefficient and not productive. Management in our company (and probably many others out there) has gotten to the point of timing how long that it takes to produce and install wire labels in a panel.
BOM data is a critical detail when designing. The use of copied data “just like last job, but a little different” is a failure form the start. Usually it is an excel file (at least in our case) which someone manually typed up. The integrity of the data is only as good as the person entering it, and there is certain data, that will, in all cases, be specific to each individual design. Typos are especially common here. If your purchasing department is like ours, you will know every time there is a fat fingered part number.
BOM formatting is also an area that is important. Panel builders, when working with engineering, will usually have a desired format to the BOM. This creates a standard, efficient document, leading to shop personnel being more efficient (makes management happy campers). Older BOM data can be an inaccurate mess, in any style, creating confusion and generally bad attitudes.
Below are a few examples of the many forms an ACADE report can take. I will not bore you with all the styles available, just a couple that we use, which have been found to be productive and efficient when providing documentation to other departments within our organization.
Reports can be generated driven by either schematic or panel data. As a rule, the schematic data, being the native data used to create a wiring diagram, is preferred. Panel data, when properly setup will follow the schematic symbol, updating automatically.
All data shown in the examples below is exportable to a file! Your choice of file format will depend on your destination software.
The screen shot above shows the multitude of available options available when generating reports. When setting up your desired style, take the time to review all the options. You will be able to find a style and layout that fits your purpose exactly.
We use the report generator to generate the following types of reports:
Bill of material, Component (device tag), Terminal numbers, Cable summary and Wire label.
The PLC I/O data is also a valuable asset, however, as The PLC program is done by the software group, it is simply data that I would import, not generate within ACADE.
This report will generate a more detailed (Bill of Material) format than the Component format seen below.
In this example, I have not sorted the data fields and applied our standard format. It is only the data for a single sheet of the schematic, not the entire project, which is an option also when generating any report.
The wire list report (see below) can easily be imported into a label printer application, thus eliminating manual typing and all of the potential pitfalls it brings.
This is far from a complete or well detailed discussion of the potential for ACADE report data. I have chosen just a few examples. There are many options that a user can configure when using this data.
Your choice of file format will depend on your destination software. This ability to adapt exported data and distribute company wide is one of the best features of ACADE.
I suggest as a CAD manager, to work with any department that may potentially use the data exported from ACADE, to define a format which works for each group. This report format should become the company standard and distributed to all ACADE users, as well as being documented in an example report for each style generated.
I there is any interest in a detailed discussion of the use of reports and how to customize or set up company standards, feel free to let me know.
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