Electrical Design Software | Elecdes Design Suite by Scada Systems Ltd

Routing with Cable scheduler

General

Cable Scheduler allows you to select a group of cables from your EDS project and then route these cables through the raceway segments (tray and conduit etc) of your EDS plant model. The routing can be fully automatic or fully manual or you can partially manually route and partially automatically route the cables. You can route all of your cables in one operation or route in several batches or one at a time.

Cable Scheduler can also perform "Modelless" cable routing, if a plant model is not required.

How it works

When Cable Scheduler starts it imports a list of all of your current EDS project components. For routing specifically it imports raceway segments (tray trench, conduit etc), cables, devices and enclosures. These are imported from your circuit diagrams and plant raceway models.

These components are all stored in an SQL database. You can create more components within the database. For example you could add new cables or enclosures directly to that database.

You can perform various routing operations on the cables in the database. You can select trays that are to be included in a cable's route or you can route a cable automatically. You can also lock a routed cable to its route for issue to site. The routing is all performed by Paneldes' routing engine the "auto router".

All finalized routing information is stored in the EDS report databases as it is created. From here it can be automatically output to PULL CARDS or TRAY CROSS SECTION tables or similar.

When you exit from Cable Scheduler all of the data you have created is synchronized with your current EDS project and is ready for your next design session in EDS, whatever it may be.

Organising Raceway

Raceway groups are ordered lists of raceway segments (e.g. trays), and are the primary means of working with raceway in Cable Scheduler. A raceway group can exist in one of three states, PARTIAL, COMPLETE, and LOCKED.

  • A PARTIAL group is a list of raceway segments used only for guiding a cable, also known as Waypoints. The auto router will attempt to route associated cables through all of the raceway segments (waypoints) in the partial raceway group.
  • A COMPLETE group describes the exact path of a cable through EVERY TRAY on its path from source to destination panel, as calculated by the auto router. A complete group is in fact a "ROUTE".
  • A LOCKED group is a manually created exact path for a cable, or COMPLETE group (from the auto router) that has been made insensitive to further auto-routing.

See Organising Raceway for more details.

You can also manually build a whole route for cable as PARTIAL group and then "force" it to become a COMPLETE group. Cable Scheduler will check the route for errors and then convert it from partial to complete. After conversion the group can be thought of as having been made by the auto router for all intents and purposes.

The raceway groups must always have their segments (trays) set in the correct order to form a sensible route for a cable.

For more information on Guiding cables and Raceway groups.

Guiding Cables with Cable scheduler

Raceway Groups : a route or guide for a cable

Add a Raceway Group for routing

Edit or reorder a Raceway Group of segments

Modelled Cable Routing

Modelled Cable Routing is the original method of cable routing provided in Cable Scheduler. It relies on the presence of a Paneldes plant model that contains a 3D model of raceway for the plant.

Tuning your routing system

Many properties of the auto routing system can be adjusted. For example, you can:

  • Adjust the "direction seeking" system to tightly focus on the destination or to loosely focus

  • Control the maximum number of segments to traverse before giving up routing for a cable

  • Set the tolerance between two trays to disallow a cable to "jump" between them

There are many adjustments that can be made. The larger your project the more of these you will need to become familiar with.

Process Overview

The typical process to route a cable or a group of cables is as follows:

  1. Make a cable list by adding Elecdes 1 line diagrams and/or schematics to an EDS Project, and using Ebase to generate reports. Alternatively, cables can be created directly in Cable Scheduler.
  2. Make a raceway model in Paneldes and add it to the project.
  3. Include the 1 line diagrams and/or schematics and your raceway model in an EDS PROJECT.
  4. Start Cable Scheduler. Your cables and raceway should be imported and present in the interface.
  5. Choose a group of cables to route:

    1. Guide the cables (optional) with one of the methods provided and the resultant raceway group.
    2. Run the auto router.
    3. View and check the routes.
    4. Lock the cables to these checked and approved routes to avoid having them rerouted continuously.
    5. Issue cables to site.
  6. Then choose another group of cables to route, and repeat.

The Optional Routing /Guiding methods

After you select a group of cables you can route them in a number of ways. You can route completely automatically, partially guide the cables with "waypoints" or route them completely manually. The links below describe these methods:

Guide selected cables with a group of waypoints

Guide selected cables with the same waypoints used by another cable

Route selected cables with the auto-router

Route selected cables exactly the same as another cable

Route selected cables similarly to another cable: "A homerun"

Route selected cables by forcing them down a known route

Modelless Cable Routing

Cable Scheduler has the ability to perform cable routing without a Paneldes plant model. Instead of (or in addition to) importing raceway from a plant model, it is possible to directly create raceway in the Cable Scheduler interface (including specifying catalog information and raceway length). This raceway can then have cables assigned to it, and routing calculations performed, producing the same type of results as from cable routing using a model (including cable lengths, tray fill, tray cross-section information).

Process Overview

The typical process to route a cable or a group of cables is as follows:

  1. Make a cable list by adding Elecdes 1 line diagrams and/or schematics to an EDS Project, and using Ebase to generate reports. Alternatively, cables can be created directly in Cable Scheduler.
  2. Start Cable Scheduler. Your cables should be imported and present in the interface.
  3. Add raceway segments directly in Cable Scheduler.
  4. Add raceway groups and populate them with the raceway segments.
  5. Assign cables to routes.
  6. Check for warnings (e.g. overfilled raceway).
  7. Issue cables to site.

Routing Results

Routing results are displayed in the columns of your database. Columns such as "length" will tell you the length of a cable or a route or a raceway segment. The "Fill" column reports the fullness of a tray (or other segment). You should always view each route you have created to ensure the results are sensible regardless of the data that is in the result columns.

Columns such as "details" and "warnings" will let you know if there have been problems in the routing process that you should attend to.

DO NOT IGNORE WARNINGS!!! They have been issued for a reason. Warnings displayed should be checked and the problems corrected. If you do not correct problems as they occur they are likely to cause downstream raceway network analysis problems toward the latter stages of your project.

Warnings could be the result of a poorly tuned auto router.

Recalculating Raceway Fills and Cable Lengths

Raceway Fills and Cable Lengths for a route are typically recalculated when the status of the route changes, or when cables are added or removed from a route.

Should you need to force a recalculation of this information, this can be done for the entire project, by clicking File > Recalculate all raceway fills and cable lengths.

Viewing Routed cables and Deleting Routes

For more instruction on viewing a cable's route or deleting a cable's route:

View routes from selected cables

Remove route from selected cables

Making your cable routes permanent

Once you have checked and approved a cables route you can make it permanent, issue it to site or mark it as pulled. In all of these cases it still affects incomplete routing however it does not need to be auto routed with the cables still being processed.

For more instruction on locking( issuing/marking as pulled) a cables route

View routes from selected cables

Remove route from selected cables

Prevent further auto-routing by locking cables to routes

Allow auto-routing of cables by unlocking

Issue cables to site – add to the Issued Cables List

Remove cables from the Issued Cable List

Mark cables as "pulled" on site

Revoke the "pulled" status of selected

Reporting the Results

The final routing results can be output to print in a number of ways. Firstly all results are automatically output to the EDS reports (RCASBCH, XSECT, ROUTE, DRUM and ISSUED reports). These are further processed into printable form with the (user customised) MDB based reports of EBASE. As a second option Cable Scheduler has its own MDB report generating system that you can use.

Generate reports

Configure database reports