AutoCAD Electrical for controls engineers
Published Thu 22 May 2008
Autodesk has released the latest version AutoCAD Electrical 2009
This ‘vertical’ is based on AutoCAD and assists in the design of electrical control systems through automating repetitive tasks, offering comprehensive symbol libraries, and encompassing an electrical-specific workflow designed to increase the productivity of controls engineers.
While there are many enhanced features and functions in the package, the five key areas for innovation for this 2009 release are: the Circuit Builder, Migration utility, Symbol Builder, Terminal strip editor and the Table Generator.
The Migration Utility lets you quickly migrate your previous version of AutoCAD Electrical to the latest release, and preserve data and settings.
In the Circuit Builder you can now dynamically generate motor control circuits. AutoCAD Electrical builds the selected circuit dynamically, matching the rung spacing, adding wiring between components, and annotating the circuit based on motor horsepower and industry standards. You can also customise the Circuit Builder to build just about any circuit you need and save it for future use.
The Symbol Builder has a new interface to simplify the creation and editing of intelligent AutoCAD Electrical symbols in the AutoCAD block editor environment.
The Terminal Strip Editor now supports insertion, edits, and deletion of jumpers. Jumpers are also displayed graphically, making it easy to visualise which terminals are jumpered together. To add a jumper, select the terminals, or levels within a multi-level terminal, and select the Assign Jumper tool. You can add a catalog to the jumper so it is included in a Bill of Materials report.
Using the Terminal Generator, AutoCAD Electrical 2009 reduces the complexity of working with terminals in a design. You can now split the terminal strip table into multiple sections, which you can then place on one or multiple drawings.
