Electrical Design Software | Elecdes Design Suite by Scada Systems Ltd

How to Use Placeholders to Pre-arrange a Wiring Diagram

Wiring diagrams and terminal strips are identified by information stored in extended entity data, which is neither editable nor visible in the drawing. None of the attributes of a wiring diagram are used for identifying and updating that diagram. This means that a wiring diagram cannot easily be copied and modified to pre-arrange the diagram for another device or terminal strip.

The Wiring Diagram Generator can use placeholders that indicate that a wiring diagram or terminal strip should be produced at a specified position for a specified device or terminal strip. The placeholders are blocks with standard attributes called Wiring Diagram anchor blocks. Wirediag anchor blocks can be inserted and updated in standard AutoCAD.

The file name of an anchor block is "WD_ANCHOR", with an optional numeric suffix.

Wiring Diagram anchor blocks can be modified by Protogen to set the name and location of the component for which the wiring diagram or terminal strip should be produced.

Procedure

  1. Insert a wd_anchor block using the standard CAD package insertion function.

  2. Place the wd_anchor block at the top left point where you wish to place a wiring diagram. This point specifies the place to draw the body of the device or terminal strip. The area occupied by the conductor lines is not included in this position.

  3. Set the TAGNAME and PNLNO attributes to the tag name and panel name of the component for which you wish to place a diagram.

  4. Set the ROTATION attribute to one of the following values: 0, 90, 180 or 270, to specify the rotation of the diagram.

  5. Set the MIRROR attribute to YES if you wish to swap the terminals and conductors from one side to the other. Otherwise set the MIRROR attribute to NO or leave it blank.

  6. The anchor block can have a TAGALIAS attribute which allows you to pre-program a template with a TAGALIAS alternate name for each device and use these aliases in references of your wiring diagram.

    See Using an Arbitrary Reference for Labelling Connections.


When the Wiring Diagram Generator is run to generate the diagrams or when WDE is used to refresh the diagrams, the anchor blocks will be removed and replaced with the wiring diagrams and terminal strips specified by their TAGNAME and PNLNO.

See also

Reduce wiring diagrams to placeholders: WDP

Refresh wiring diagrams: WDE


For information about the anchor block, see Wiring Diagram Symbols and Attributes.