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…