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…