In my previous article, Linking Components between AutoCAD Electrical and Autodesk Inventor, I talked about how you can link components between AutoCAD Electrical and Inventor in the Location View. In this blog my focus will be on how you can view component and connectivity differences and resolve them.
Viewing Differences in the Location View
Once the Electrical symbol and the Inventor part
are lined in the Location View they need to be merged into a single representation. The single representation may be Linked
, or Linked with Differences
depending on whether there is any difference between the properties of the component between Electrical and Inventor. Properties that are compared between Electrical and Inventor are Category, Catalog No, Manufacturer, Assembly Code, Tag, Installation, Location, Tag Strip, Terminal No, Rating 1, 2, Description 1, Description 2, and Description 3.
If there is a difference between the PINS of the linked components, we do not merge the pins in the grid but keep them in separate rows. However pins with the same name are merged to a single pin.
On linking, the properties that you define in AutoCAD Electrical are compared with the properties defined from Inventor, and the differences are shown in the Location view in the following ways:
On the Component Tree
Use the filter on the top of the Location view to filter the components with a specific status.
When you hover your cursor over an item in the component tree, the tooltip shows you the summary of differences between the components.
On Component Detail Tab
If the selected component has any differences between properties, you see an indicator on the top of the Component Detail tab.
The differences are shown with highlighted cells in the grid. Make sure you have turned on all columns so that you do not miss any differences.
On Connection Detail Tab
If the selected component has any differences in the way it is wired, you see an indicator on the top of the Connection Detail tab.
The connectivity differences are shown highlighted in the Grid.
Resolving Differences
When resolving differences, keep in mind:
- AutoCAD Electrical will not make changes to your Inventor assembly. So when you resolve differences from within AutoCAD Electrical, you are bringing the Inventor properties to your AutoCAD Electrical drawings.
- Inventor will not make changes to your AutoCAD Electrical drawings. So when you resolve differences from within Inventor, you are bringing the AutoCAD Electrical properties to your assembly.
On Component Detail Tab in AutoCAD Electrical
Select one or multiple differences of a single component on the Component detail grid and click Accept Inventor on the right top of the grid.
By doing that you are approving the design definitions added by the Inventor user and updating the Electrical component definitions. As you click on the accept differences, the standard insert/edit dialog pops up and Inventor properties are prepopulated on the dialog.
On pressing OK the component gets updated and the component status becomes linked.
You can also edit the component detail on the drawing and manually change the values of the component to match Inventor properties. Sync the Location view to update the status of the component to Linked from Linked with differences.
On Connection Detail Tab
There is no automatic method to update differences on this grid. Since it shows the connection differences between Electrical and Inventor, the way to resolve this difference is to manually change connections in the drawings to match Inventor connection definitions. Once you change connections and press save and Refresh, you can view the status change of the component in Location tree.
At any point of time if you want to export the information on the grid in Microsoft Excel format, you can do so using the Export button on the top right of the grid. Once all the components are in Linked state you can use Export to get the consolidated list of components used in Electromechanical Project.
Stay tuned for more articles on the AutoCAD Electrical 2016 release features.
Vikas Vaishnav
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Thank you
Posted by: Ludmila | 04/29/2015 at 12:03 AM
You are most welcome!
Posted by: Vikas Vaishnav | 04/29/2015 at 02:57 AM