by Miles Nicholson
Select Panel ribbon tab > Other Tools pane >
The AEPANELCONFIG command inserts an invisible block named WD_PNLM into the drawing as default at 0,0. The block holds the settings for the panel configuration options that include footprint insertion scale, balloon setup, layer assignments etc. If this block is not present in the current drawing a message box displays asking permission to insert the block.
To avoid having to add this block and define the panel configuration settings on a per-drawing basis, it is recommended to add and define the settings within your {company name}.dwt drawing template.
Item Numbering
Specifies the number or letter to use as the first item number. AutoCAD Electrical item numbers are defined on either a drawing-wide or project-wide basis dependent on the project properties so that the same number is always applied to identical components.
Balloon
The Setup allows the user to define the type of balloon marker (circle, ellipse, polygon, text), marker size, margin, and text gap. This user can also Apply to all Balloons in Active Drawing
If this option is checked when you click OK, all existing balloons in the drawing are updated to match the current balloon settings.
Footprint layers
This allows the user to define the panel component layers, non-text graphic layers, and nameplate layers. Panel footprint layering works in the same way as schematic symbol layering. When AutoCAD Electrical inserts a footprint, the footprint is modified on the fly to match the layering scheme set up in this dialogue. If you wish to maintain the layers of the footprint blocks, remove the layer definition.
Default spacing for multiple inserts
Specifies the x and y distance spacing for multiple footprint inserts.
Footprint insert
Specifies the default insert scale for panel footprint symbols. Also specifies whether to insert the attribute template drawings and the scale it will use.
Intelligent attributes will be added to any footprint automatically when a footprint is inserted. AutoCAD Electrical utilises the following blocks and merges them with the dumb blocks footprint representation as the footprint is being inserted.
There are five attribute template drawings:
Component Footprints: wd_ptag_addattr_comp.dwg
Terminal Footprints: wd_ptag_addattr_trm.dwg
Terminal with wire no. as terminal number: wd_ptag_addattr_wtrm.dwg
Balloons: wd_ptag_addattr_itemballoon.dwg
If the appropriate attribute template exists, the following steps are performed when a panel footprint is inserted.
- Find the centre of the footprint by collecting and averaging the objects that make up the footprint.
- Insert the attribute template at the calculated centre of the footprint.
- Make sure there are no duplicate attributes. If duplicate attributes are found, the attribute from the footprint is kept.
- Re-block the added attributes with the inserted footprint.
- Add the schematic data to the footprint. If the target attribute exists, the data is added as attribute data. If the target attribute does not exist, the data is added as invisible Xdata.
- Uncheck the Enabled check box if you do not want AutoCAD Electrical to search for the attribute template drawing. If enabled, select a scale factor, 1.0 to insert as is, or select to scale to a specific text height.
Panel wire connection report XYZ offset reference
Specifies the x, y, or z-offset value used in the Panel Wire Connection report. If the footprint symbols carry the X#TERM## attributes, their XYZ wire connection location is included in the report and offset by these values.
Format: Panel wire connection text
Select Setup to define the default wire connection text format used by the Wire Annotation feature. This format is used as the default when creating wiring diagrams, cable diagrams etc.