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Using Pinlists to Maximize Efficiency

Many electrical designs utilize components with a large number of connections, and keeping track of which connections have already been used in a design can be tricky. Using pinlists with AutoCAD Electrical is the most efficient way to track both used and available pins, as well as keeping the connections of any device organized by type. They are useful for error checking, maintaining accurate connection information, and ensuring that pins that are supposed to go together stay together. Pinlists can be used for all kinds of devices, and in the substation design world we see them used most often with relays and test switches. At the most basic level, pinlists are long strings of text, or lists of lists, that contain connection data for a given component. The pinlists are stored in the catalog database, where they are given unique, manufacturer-based tables. For example, the pinlists for all of your SEL components would not be found in the PR table; rather, they would be found in the _PINLIST_SEL table (assuming that “SEL” is what you used in the MANUFACTURER field). The pinlist fields are editable within the Access or SQL database, as well as within the catalog browser inside AutoCAD Electrical. I recommend typing your pinlists in a text editor like Notepad, and then copying them into your database. Alternatively, some of my clients have developed pinlist builders using Excel, which is a great way to do it for those who can maximize the powers of Excel. Building Pinlists A pinlist entry can have three types of information, and takes the following form: TYPE, TERM01, TERM02, *DESCRIPTION. The type of contact must always be the first item in a pinlist entry, and AutoCAD Electrical has built-in values associated with these contact types. A ‘1’ is used for normally open contacts, ‘2’ is for normally closed, ‘3’ is for NONC, and ‘4’ is used for custom contact types. The custom contact type is frequently used within substation design, and the SDSIC has published a list of recommended pinlist types, which you can see below. When using custom pinlist types, be sure to use the attribute PINLIST_TYPE on your child symbols, with the desired type set as the default value of this attribute. (Parent symbols should use the attribute COILPIN, which can be left blank.) SDSIC Custom Connection Types 4DI : Digital Inputs 4DO : Digital Outputs 4DIP : Digital Inputs (Polarity…

Solving Annotation Problems on Wiring Diagrams

One of the best tools in the SDS Toolkit for AutoCAD Electrical is the Annotation tool. This tool takes the wire connection data from the schematic drawings in your project and pushes it out to the corresponding components on the wiring diagrams. This is a significant time-saving tool, and is one of the best features of the SDS Toolkit. But what do you do when you have annotation problems? How do you resolve incorrect annotation data without manually typing it in? 1. Rebuild the Database The very first thing I do to resolve annotation problems is rebuild the database. To do this, either click the “Rebuild Dbase” icon from the SDS Tools ribbon, or type AEREBUILDDB at the command prompt. Depending on the size of your project, this could take up to a couple of minutes. By doing this, you are making sure that the database, from which the annotation data is drawn, is up to date. The annotation tool will freshen the database every time it is run, but it doesn’t rebuild the entire thing from scratch. Sometimes you need to do this to pick up changes that have been made in the past. 2. Check the INST+LOC+TAG values If rebuilding the database doesn’t solve the problem, be sure to check the INST, LOC, and TAG attributes on both the schematic and panel symbols. In fact, if nothing annotates on the wiring diagram symbol, this should be the first thing you check. One easy way to check this is to SURF on the panel symbol and see what else comes up. If there are no other components found, then you know there is a mismatch somewhere along the INST+LOC+TAG string. Incidentally, if you are getting unexpected annotation, or way too much data on your annotation, you may want to check your project properties menu. In the Components tab of this menu, there is a very important checkbox that you need to activate: Combined Installation/Location tag mode. This should always be checked for all of your projects because it tells the software to identify each component by its INST+LOC+TAG attribute string. If this is unchecked, the software will treat all components with the same TAG value (think terminal blocks) as the same component. 3. Confirm the Wire Sequence If the annotation you are seeing on your wiring diagrams is good, but just in the wrong order, you’ll want to go…

  • December 18, 2019
  • By andrew
  • SDS

Building Intelligent Symbol Libraries

More and more utilities and engineering firms are making the switch to AutoCAD Electrical and the SDS Toolkit for P&C substation design. It’s an exciting time for our industry, and while it’s not my place to name names, there are major organizations leading the way toward industry-wide intelligent substation design. But what does it take to make this kind of transition? One of the biggest hurdles in making the transition to AutoCAD Electrical and the SDS Toolkit is the development of intelligent symbol libraries. AutoCAD Electrical utilizes a blocks+attributes approach, which is what gives it so much of its power and intelligence. And that’s all that an AutoCAD Electrical symbol is: a block with attributes. That may not sound like such a big deal, but a quick scan through a substation drawing set will remind you just how many different symbols you use on a given project, and just how daunting a task it can be to create intelligent symbol libraries. Some intelligent symbol libraries that I’ve helped to develop in the past have over 800 unique symbols! If you count on an average of 15 minutes to create each symbol (many take less, but there are some that take much, much more), you’re looking at spending up to 200 hours on symbol creation — and that’s if you know what you’re doing! Here are some things to consider as you build your custom, intelligent symbol libraries. Organization AutoCAD Electrical looks for two unique symbol libraries: the schematic library and the panel library. At the very least, you’ll need to have all of your schematic symbols stored in the schematic library, and all of your panel symbols (including both front and rear view) in the panel library. It’s important to keep these two basic types of symbols separated. However, if you have 800 symbols or more in your libraries, scanning through all of those files can be a frustrating and time-consuming experience. Several of my clients have decided to break each primary folder down into subfolders organized by families. So all of the schematic protective relays go in one subfolder, all of the fuses in another, and all of the terminals in yet another — you get the idea. The biggest benefit to this approach is that you know exactly where to go to find what you’re looking for. However, you’ll also have to be sure to add each and…

Holt Design Tools for Designing Symbols

I’m pleased to offer a great set of tools for AutoCAD Electrical symbol building – for free! These tools are designed with substation designers in mind, allowing them to create large-scale symbols (think SEL relay wiring diagram symbols) with ease and efficiency. Here’s a brief glimpse of what’s included. IAN – This tool allows users to automatically increment attribute names, so that TERM01 becomes TERM02 with just a single click! IAV – Similar to IAN, except that instead of incrementing attribute names, this tool increments attribute values. CHA_DIR – This tool lets users quickly and painlessly change the direction of attributes like X1TERM01. That means you can change X1TERM01 to X4TERM01 with just a click! REORDER_ATTDEF – In the Enhanced Attribute Editor inside of AutoCAD Electrical, attributes appear in the order in which they were placed on the symbol drawing. But with this tool, attributes are reordered so that they appear in a logical and functional order. AGAP – This tool creates a user-defined gap between attributes, making symbols look clean and professional. Full documentation is included with the download. Just click on the link to download the .zip file, and then extract it in a convenient location on your local drive. Open any AutoCAD Electrical drawing, and the file holtdesign.fas to the Startup Suite by using the command APPLOAD. Now the file will automatically load with every new drawing you open. We’re confident that you’re going to love these tools, and that they will make symbol building so much more fun and efficient! Note (11-28-18): The design tools have been updated to correct an issue with the AGAP tool requiring the user to be running the SDS toolkit in AutoCAD Electrical.

Custom LISP Tools for Wiring

Drafting substation projects is often tedious work because there are so many things that have to be done over and over again. Small, mundane tasks need to be repeated countless times in order for your intelligent substation project to work properly. Fortunately, Holt Design Co. has created some custom LISP tools to make some of these processes much quicker. Two things that you just can’t get around are adding wire numbers and marking external terminal connections. Normally this would involve clicking on each wire that you want to number, adding your custom text, and repeating ad infinitum. Then you have to go back and check the I/E connections of each terminal. This process can be extremely tedious, not to mention mind-numbing. In order to make this process more bearable for one of our clients, we have created two custom LISP tools to blast through these processes. We’re able to use these tools because this client has done something really smart with their template: They created a separate layer for all of their external wires. An external wire begins at a terminal point on one location (say, LOC code = R1) and ends at a point on another location (say, LOC code = R2). The terminal connection points at either end of these wires need to be marked with an E, for external, so that they will annotate on the appropriate side in the wiring diagram. Putting these wires on a separate layer allows the designer to know, at a glance, that this wire needs a cable marker and a wire number, and that the terminals on either end are external. This kind of visual cue is, in our opinion, a great way to design a substation project. The first of our custom LISP tools allow our client to simply click on a wire and swap it to the external wiring layer, as well as automatically mark the connected terminal points as external. Once the designer has inserted and labelled cable markers on these wires, the second tool allows him or her to pick on a wire and automatically sets the wire number based on the cable marker and conductor color. Take a look at the video above to see these custom LISP tools in action.

Connect Wires with Different Wire Numbers to the Same Terminal

One common situation in substation designs is connecting multiple wires with different wire numbers to the same terminal. The design calls for the wire number to break as it passes through the terminal point, even though the drawing might not show all of this information. AutoCAD® Electrical allows you to connect multiple wires with different wire numbers to the same terminal. The trick is using the correct terminal symbol. It’s important to know how AutoCAD® Electrical handles schematic symbol block names. You can read all the details about schematic symbols here, but when it comes to terminal symbols, this is what you need to know. The first two characters in the file name must be either HT (for horizontal terminals) or VT (for vertical terminals). The third character is the one that determines what kind of terminal it is. To create a terminal that does not break the wire number, use a ‘0’ in that third position. But if you need a terminal that does break the wire number, the third character should be a ‘1’. So a square terminal block that breaks the wire number might have a name of HT10_SQUARE.dwg, VT1001_SQ.dwg, or whatever fits your needs. This seems like basic information, but if you don’t know about the schematic symbol naming convention, you won’t know how to wire up these terminals. Before I had this information, I spent a couple very frustrating hours naming and renaming wires, only to have my entire wire network get all screwed up! The simplest solution, of course, was to swap an HT1* symbol in for the HT0* symbol that was already on the drawing. This little tip has been a game changer in my design philosophy. One of my clients only wants “external” wires to have wire numbers. This means that every wire that changes LOC (location) code from one end to the other needs to be numbered. When this is drafted, however, the wire most likely runs from something like a protection relay in location 1, passes through two terminals (one in location 1 and the other in location 2), and ends up in something like a control relay in location 2. When drawn, this looks like a single wire segment with two terminals on it. However, if the two terminals are wire-breaking terminals, the segment between them can be assigned a wire number, and the two segments on either side will remain…

When to use the INST attribute

One of the most common questions we get about using AutoCAD® Electrical symbols is what to do with the INST attribute. It seems important, and you would think that it ought to carry a value of some kind. But that’s not always the case. In fact, you will most likely never need to use the INST attribute in any of your projects. Let me explain. Just like the LOC attribute stands for LOCATION, the INST attribute stands for INSTALLATION. The installation code is the next layer of component identification above location. For example, if you have a protection relay R1 in location PNL2 in installation N, the software would identify that component as N+PNL2+R1. (The image on the left shows where this option is activated in the Project Properties menu. It is highly recommended that this option is always on for all of your projects.)  As far as AutoCAD Electrical is concerned, the name of your component is a concatenation of three attributes: INST + LOC + TAG. So it might seem like a good idea to assign a value for the INST attribute in all of your drawings, right? Probably not. The installation code is only meant to be used on large substation projects with multiple installations of (essentially) the same system. If your project has two or more control houses (for example, a north side and a south side), then you probably need to set the INST code. Otherwise, it’s perfectly acceptable to leave it blank. There’s no need to add another layer of complexity to an already complex project. Using unnecessary installation codes can cause confusion for the designer and the software. The LOC and TAG attributes are all that are needed to identify the components in any project for most users. Adding another layer of identification only creates the possibility for more errors. As always, it’s better to keep things simple. Unless your project has multiple control houses, ignore the INST attribute. But if your project does require multiple, identical design copies, we recommend using a sensible code. How is each identical design copy labelled? Consider using that to come up with a short, unique INST code for each design copy.