How to Draw Conductors for a Circuit

Elecdes uses line segments and arcs of ANY LINETYPE and ANY LAYER or COLOR to represent conductors for: loop diagrams, schematics and single line diagrams. A line segment may represent multiple conductors on single line diagrams.

Use the LINE command or the ARC command of the CAD package to create conductor lines on your drawing.

Conductor LINE SEGMENTS and ARCS are used for two purposes:

To graphically represent the conductor on your drawing sheet.
For Ebase to analyse interconnection and produce cable, core(conductor) and panel wire schedules.

Reporting with Ebase

If you intend to produce interconnection schedules with Ebase you must observe the following rules when creating line segments on a drawing.

NOTE: for the purpose of interconnection, Elecdes has a pre-set MARGIN of ERROR. This margin is necessary to allow for the small errors in positioning that you might make when creating drawings. The margins are 1.0 mm for metric users and 1/32 inches for US users. In this manual, if a line is "CONNECTED" to a component or another line then the distance between the two items is less than the described margin of error.

For all line segments which DO NOT represent conductors:

Endpoints must not be CONNECTED to any point on DEVICE, TERMINAL, conductor MARKER or WIRE CONNECT symbols. Line segments must not intersect in any way with these symbols.
Endpoints must not CONNECT with any line segments that are representing conductors.
You may use polylines or blocks to replace line segments that must break the above 2 rules.

For all line segments which DO represent conductors:

Line segments and arcs (of the same conductor) are assumed to be connected if their endpoints are CONNECTED.
A line segment that terminates on another line segment (not at its endpoint) is considered connected to that line segment UNLESS the 'Require connect dots at line joins' option is set in the preferences. In that case the lines are considered connected ONLY if an Elecdes wire connect dot symbol is present at the intersection point.
Connected line segments are included in interconnection scheduling etc. only if they are CONNECTED to a DEVICE, a TERMINAL or a conductor MARKER block.
Do not use polylines or NON Elecdes blocks to represent conductors.
To construct lines, representing conductors, you may use the CAD package's LINE command.
To construct arcs, representing conductors, you may use the CAD package's ARC command.
Any of the standard editing commands provided by the CAD package may be used to edit line segments.

Hint: ORTHO, SNAP and OBJECT SNAP tools

ORTHO ON and SNAP ON are two very useful CAD package tools for ensuring all of your wire lines are perfectly spaced and connected to your component symbols.

Elecdes turns ORTHO ON when a new drawing is created and this causes lines to be either vertical or horizontal. Vertical and horizontal, as a rule, is desirable for all wires in an electrical diagram.

Elecdes sets the SNAP ON by way of a MET_SNAP/IMP_SNAP setting in the EL32.INI file. The snap setting allows the use of a diagrammatical grid for all of your wiring and components and this produces consistent and tidy drawings.

We do not however recommend the use of OBJECT SNAP for any electrical drawing as it encourages random spacing of components and wires and produces lines which are off the horizontal and vertical plane which looks untidy. OBJECT SNAP should only be used in the mechanical and architectural disciplines. It can also interfere with automated drawing macros provided by Elecdes and other applications.

Elecdes used without Ebase reporting

If you do not use the EBASE package for reporting, you may construct any line segments on any Elecdes drawing, at any position which produces your desired pictorial output.