By Miles Nicholson
AutoCAD has long had the functionality to set standards for layer names, dimension styles, and other elements; check drawings against these standards and then change any properties that do not conform.
These standards are defined and individual or multiple drawings can be audited for violations of standards. Any errors that are found within the drawings can then be automatically fixed. This enables the AutoCAD user to easily adopt a customer’s standard.
However, AutoCAD does not take into account electrical related problems. AutoCAD Electrical will save a customer both time and effort in ensuring designs are consistent and silly mistakes are eradicated.
- The Drawing Audit utility will report on wire‐related clean‐up functions and will rectify the problems automatically. Bogus wire numbers, incorrect colour/gauge labels and zero length wires will automatically be cleaned.
- The Electrical Audit utility checks the entire project. Wires with no connection, missing or duplicated wire numbers, components with missing catalogue assignment, duplicated component tags and components with no connections are reported to name a few. Issues are shown and the user can navigate to the specific error. They can also choose whether to ignore or rectify the issue.
- Preferred manufacturers parts can be defined to aid multiple engineers to be consistent from one job to another thus saving money in parts procurement due to standardisation.
- Company standard reports can be defined to ensure that the documentation is consistent from one engineer to another. These reports can be produced automatically with a single operation.
These are just a few of the tools available within AutoCAD Electrical meaning that utilizing AutoCAD Electrical will ensure a return on investment for both your company and clients.