I was recently involved in a fair sized project conversion (200+ pages) from AutoCAD to EPlan P8. I was helping this customer on their very first Eplan project which would eventually become their “template” for future machines. What struck me, once again, is that most people coming from AutoCAD tend to concentrate on the graphical aspects of their documents, while giving less consideration to the logical aspects of it. Having worked with AutoCAD for many years myself, I definitely understand why it is so. AutoCAD is a very good drafting software, but when it comes to expressing electrical schematics, it falls flat for anything but the most trivial project. The lack of specialized tools in AutoCAD makes it so that drafters will leave out details that would guide the panel builders in their job, only to shift that responsibility on those same panel builders.
One good example of this is leaving out the terminals from the schematics because “our guys on the shop floor know where to put them as needed”. Uk marriage certificate serial number. Not only does this shift responsibility to the wrong place, but it raises the labor cost when errors are discovered and panel builders/shop workers lack the knowledge to correct them. We then assist to a merry-go-round between shop floor, drafters and engineers, and a simple one hour thing ends up eating up a man-day of labor. This is definitely a mistake when working with EPlan, which is more of a design tool than a drafting tool. In EPlan, as you create your electrical schematics, you’re not only laying out graphical elements on the page, you’re actually building a “model” of you machine’s controls. The analogy I always give at my trainings is that of using AutoCAD vs.
3D modeling software for mechanical design. In the old days of 2D drafting, modifications to one drawing often involved many manual updates on several other drawings to reflect all the views of the object. Countless errors came from forgotten updates, and many manufactured parts had to be scrapped because of this. With the advent of 3D modeling software such as Inventor or SolidWorks, you concentrate on modeling the actual part, and you generate views as needed. Any needed changes are done on the model itself, and views are regenerated, making sure that nothing is forgotten. This brings consistency and quality to the design.
Shop workers are free to do their jobs instead of wasting time trying to understand discrepancies between drawings. When applied to the electrical engineering field, modeling your controls is a definite advantage over “dumb” graphical entities. Once the model is completed, you can project “views” in the form of reports that give you all the needed documents for you production team. For example, you can extract a bill of material, a list of wires, terminal diagrams and so on. You know that these generated documents will be consistent and error free as long as you maintain your model error free. One typical source of errors in electrical schematics is the manual handling of cross-references.
Eplan Electrical Design Software
For example, a relay coil will typically be represented on one page, and its contacts on different pages. Trying to maintain this information manually is tedious and error prone. The same goes for interruption points that transmit your power rails between pages. This automated cross-referencing in EPlan alone is well worth the cost of the software! Another benefit of modeling your controls is that it forces the designer to actually think about what he’s doing as opposed to a drafter who’s content with executing the red-lining given to him by the engineers. This is most apparent in the routing of your circuits within your electrical enclosures.
Let’s give an example of this. Here’s a typical AutoCAD way of representing schematics: This is an IEC style schematic where we see some relays, a door mounted pilot light, and a field mounted pilot light. The problem with this representation is that it gives absolutely no clue to the panel builder about the routing of the wires. If we were to follow the circuit naively, we would go from relay K2 to relay K3, to the door, then to the field, and finally back to the enclosure to relay K4.
This would of course be a very inefficient way of wiring this circuit because we’d have to bring two wires to the pilot light in the door, and two wires to the one in the field. This is where the knowledge of how to build the machine is shifted from the engineering department to the production floor. We rely on the experience of a few individuals within the company who have informal knowledge of how to wire your machines. If they should ever retire or leave the company, or even if you were to outsource your production, you’d be hard pressed to come up with this knowledge. On the other hand, here’s the same schematics reworked in EPlan: First we notice that components have been reordered to better express the real routing of the wires.
Obviously, we want to daisy chain the neutral on those relays before going out to the door and field. Also, we show the actual terminals to connect external components.
Finally, we notice the use of T-Nodes instead of points to better express the routing. From such a model of the circuit, we could easily generate a list of wires with their respective source and destination, and the panel builder team would simply have to blindly follow it. So in the end, when converting AutoCAD schematics to EPlan, it’s not only a matter of making sure that the graphical aspect of the wiring is done, but there is also a lot of thought that must be given to the logical aspects. This will of course involve spending more time in the design phase, but what I’ve seen is that this time consistently pays for itself down the line. If you need someone to convert your AutoCAD schematics to EPlan, don’t hesitate to contact us for expert consulting on how to best achieve this.
British Columbia, Canada’s westernmost province with its lush Pacific coastal rain forests and breath-taking mountains, is as resource-rich as it is scenic. BC and neighboring Alberta offer boundless opportunities for 3 Phase Power Systems, Inc. To provide the oil and gas, mining, renewable energy and transportation sectors among others with state-of-the-art power supply and conversion equipment and engineered solutions like motor control centers, switchgears, variable frequency drives, electrical houses and skid packages.
Since 3 Phase Power’s engineering group switched from AutoCAD Electrical to EPLAN Electric P8 and EPLAN Pro Panel in 2013, adding the copper module to EPLAN Pro Panel in 2014 for cutting bus bars and other copper in control cabinets, they have enjoyed major productivity improvements in all phases of project execution. Sold on EPLAN, can't contemplate return to AutoCAD 3 Phase Power is a full-service manufacturer, distributor and integrator and its engineering department works on all manner and size of projects. Dwayne Donaldson, Senior Electrical Designer, lists many areas where EPLAN automation and EPLAN Pro Panel’s 3D layout have been a tremendous upgrade, accelerating project design, often dramatically. In some cases, his group is skipping entire steps in creating build packages.
For example, with some small jobs, Donaldson often dispenses with the need to do mechanical drawings by exporting EPLAN Pro Panel’s 3D drill panel views to PDFs. Everything the fabrication crew needs to build the panel is represented in those PDFs.
Autocad Vs Autocad Electrical
“It’s a huge time savings for me.” says Donaldson. Comparable, large projects done in one-third of the time When Donaldson’s team worked in AutoCAD, much time went into setting up drill patterns. “In Pro Panel,” he says, “as long as you set up the (parts) database, all the drill patterns associated with parts, 3D macros associated with parts, it’s just a matter of placing them. We’re at a point where the shop and my team both trust the drill patterns, the cutouts, the alignment of stuff so work proceeds faster.” He’s a huge advocate of EPLAN Pro Panel’s 3D layouts. “It’s amazing the savings you can have on the fabrication floor. And all of that is available to the client any time you need it.” Projects are being turned around a lot faster now.
Donaldson cites two very similar, large projects, one done in AutoCAD; the second, in EPLAN. The AutoCAD project took six weeks. “We were finishing the design when we were shipping the project,” states Donaldson. The second one took just two weeks from receipt of the purchase order through design and manufacturing. Often, there are small jobs based on an archived project where only minor modifications to the template are required. “With AutoCAD, it took longer to replicate a project,” he says.
“I can copy a project I’ve done in EPLAN in minutes, whereas with AutoCAD, you had to deal through a process, copy files, make different folder structures. It was not as intuitive as EPLAN, I couldn’t just go and copy a project and it was done.” BOMs now 97% accurate “In the AutoCAD environment, bills of materials (BOMs) were maybe 60% accurate, give or take,” says Donaldson.
“Parts were missing. Or the right ones were not always selected, or in stock, which impacted manufacturing. We were always running around trying to find things.” Corrections to the BOMs weren’t logged by the production staff, so if an older project was used as a template for a new order, the inaccuracies in the BOM carried over to that project. “We always wanted the shop to mark up (changes to) the Bill of Materials but they didn’t want to deal with part numbers, so we would never get a markup of it. We could have made more accurate BOMs but that would have required a lot of extra time and we were just too busy.” Huge macro library supports accelerated design Through a combination of EPLAN automation – auto-generating the BOM, wire list, etc. As schematics and other project content are created – and the investment of time to create an archive of approximately 1,500 EPLAN-ready macros, Donaldson estimates BOMs now are about 97% accurate. With EPLAN’s parts exporting feature, it’s much easier to manage inventory for on-time availability.
It also makes for faster, more accurate project quotes; Donaldson and his colleagues do a 3D layout from which they generate a BOM, then the sales staff adds in pricing. Another EPLAN feature that helps 3 Phase Power maintain a high degree of accuracy is the ability to transfer electrical design data automatically to EPLAN Pro Panel, eliminating the error risk associated with manually re-entering and error-checking electrical data. Next phase: Build more schematic macros With 1,500 EPLAN macros and more to come, 3 Phase Power’s macro archive is extensive by any measure, and is helping accelerate design work for all manner of projects. The archive contains project macros for standard builds requiring only minor modifications, like adding a button or taking one out, to meet customer specifications. Donaldson and his colleagues have begun layering schematic macros onto project templates. “We have a project macro for every size of Vacon frame drive we have.
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Within that project macro we’ve put a schematic macro on the schematic so we can change the horsepower of the motor.” There may be five different motors suitable for a given frame drive. “Project-wise, the layout doesn’t change, just the part number.” That’s another time-saver.
Convert Eplan To Autocad
“The EPLAN Data Portal, offering access to over a half million data sets, has proven invaluable in creating such a large archive,” says Donaldson. In the reactor area in particular, his group has used the EPLAN Data Portal to import a full lineup of frequently used components like bus bar isolators and GE circuit breakers. “We’ve downloaded easily hundreds of parts macros from the Data Portal.
It’s an incredible tool.” Overall, Donaldson says his EPLAN Experience has been so positive he wouldn’t take a job that required him to use CAD software as the primary design tool. 3 Phase Power Systems offers an enthusiastic endorsement for how EPLAN Electric P8 used in conjunction with EPLAN Pro Panel can improve project accuracy and accelerate workflows. A large project that would take six weeks using AutoCAD can now be completed in two weeks in EPLAN. Small projects based on a few minor modifications to an EPLAN project template can be done in minutes, instead of hours in AutoCAD. Bills of Materials that used to have an accuracy of maybe 60% are typically about 97% accurate when generated in EPLAN, which in turn leads to a host of time-saving benefits in production and procurement. Employing EPLAN Pro Panel’s 3D layout has helped accelerate fabrication; crews now trust the accuracy of drilling pattern views and often use them exclusively – without mechanical drawings – to build panels, just a few examples of how EPLAN has improved the company’s overall productivity.
Find out more about 3 Phase Power Systems.
EPLAN Electric P8 offers unlimited possibilities for project planning, documentation, and management of automation projects. The automatic production of detailed reports based on wiring diagrams is an integral part of a comprehensive documentation system and provides subsequent phases of the project, such as production, assembly, commissioning and service with the data required. Engineering data from other project areas can be exchanged via interfaces with the CAE software, thus guaranteeing consistency and integration throughout the entire product development process. Each planning procedure has its advantages in certain project phases – be it generating initial graphical machinery/plant overviews, creating schematics or recording project information in the database independently of the graphics. The ideal situation is for an engineering system to support these different planning approaches with equal priority. You decide which method of operation is the most efficient for you, and EPLAN provides continuous consistency in the project data, regardless of your method of operation.
EPLAN Electric P8 supports global standards such as IEC, NFPA, the Russian GOST standard and the Chinese GB standard with appropriate master data and sample projects. The optional standard conversion ensures that you remain competitive as globalisation increases. Thanks to continuous Unicode capability, EPLAN Electric P8 provides schematics in any language on the basis of your individual translation databases – from Chinese circuit diagrams to Russian part lists, everything is translated online or as soon as the plant is complete. The combination of standard functions and optional extensions in EPLAN Electric P8 allows you to optimise your entire planning process and increase the quality of your automation documentation in the long term.