AutoCAD Electrical Automatic Reports

Need to output some reports to Excel? Place reports as tables on drawings? Or update a group of existing report tables? If you answered yes to any of these questions you can save time by using Automatic reports in AutoCAD Electrical.

The investment

It takes some setup but once you make it through that you can run multiple reports with just a few clicks.

• Create a format (.SET) file for each report (video at 0:00-2:40)
• Create a report grouping file (.RGF) for the group of reports (video at 2:40-4:30)

The payoff

• Run Automatic Reports as often as you need and reap the benefits of all that setup (video at 4:30-5:30)

API

You can further automate this using the API call (c:ace_auto_rpt rgfnam firstdnam templatenam)

Parameters	Description
rgfnam	Report Grouping file name as created in Automatic Reports dialog box.
firstdnam	Name of first drawing name if table output is an option and new drawing(s) will be created, can be nil if no new drawings will be created.
templatenam	Template name if table output is an option and new drawing(s) will be created, nil for no template.

Note: When entering file names make sure to use either "\\" or "/" in the file paths.

This can be added to a script and will run without any user input or dialogs.

- Pat Murnen

Comments

[Dan Margulius]

how can we build areport that has no catalog data and also get the sum of the components. For example I have 5 fuses in my circuit and no catalog data. If I build a component report I get 5 rows and not one. Can something be done in this matter?
Thanks

[Pat Murnen]

Dan, without some programming in a User Post lisp I don't think this can be done. The Bill of Materials report groups components with the same catalog together. Without any catalog information AutoCAD Electrical would not know how to group them. For example, even if the same symbol is used for your five fuses, they may actually be different components depending on the rating. The Component Report is always going to list each component on a separate line as that is the purpose of that particular report, i.e. to list each component.

[Dan Margulius]

Yes I understand. We already have a lisp that does that but it can't create excel reports like Electrical.May be you can check this as a wishlist,let electrical count electrical blocks by name block and export to excel.
I have a few more questions about electrical. Will it be possible to send you an email? We are the reseller in Israel.
Thanks

[Pat Murnen]

Dan, yes I will log that as a wish list item. I also will look at the available API calls to see if there might be a way to do this and pass it into the report dialog somehow, then you could save it out as a spreadsheet from there. If I come up with something I will post it as a blog article so anyone else interested can also take advantage of it.

[electrician in truro]

First and foremost, some groundwork needs to be done before something goes wrong with the lighting and an emergency electrician needs to be called for. Asking friends and neighbors for recommendations is a good way to begin. Everyone has lighting problems and every household has used an electrician at least once.