AutoCAD electrical is a powerful product from Autodesk solution for Digital Prototyping. This AutoCAD software is a highly tailored tool which is designed to create and modify electrical control systems. The tool contains all the functionality of AutoCAD along with a comprehensive set of tools for automating control engineering tasks, such as designing circuits, numbering wires and creating bill of materials.
Some of the key feature sets of AutoCAD Electrical are as under:
1. Location View Tab on Project Manager: The Project manager now has a Location view Tab that provides a complete view of the devices and wiring contained in the current project. The components in the tab are organized by installation and location values with features such as:
• View Catalog, description and rating information.
• View the component pin values by expanding the device
• Surf to a selected component by a right click
2. AutoCAD Electrical and Inventor Interoperability: Users can now link an AutoCAD Electrical Project to an Inventor Project. The link lets users to exchange data between 2D and 3D designs. Users can use the Location View tab once the project is linked to view both the AutoCAD Electrical and Inventor Components with data.
3. Default Wire Sequence: This feature provides default wire sequencing for wire networks with multiple components. AutoCAD Electrical performs a sequence of steps to determine wire connection sequence ensuring the sequence is well designed.
4. Wire Number Attribute Support: Users can edit the wire number attributes from the Edit Wire Number Attributes Dialogue box. The fields in the reports are:
• Wire To/ From
• Component wire List
• Terminal Plan
• Connector Plug
• Cable To/ From
5. Insert Connector: AutoCAD Electrical maintains Insert Connector dialogue box across sessions of the tool. Once the default settings are set, the user is not needed to set it again.The tool supports two groups of settings, one for metric drawings, and another for imperial drawings. The tool uses the appropriate settings automatically based on project active drawings.
6. Annotate One-Line Components: The designers may want to annotate a one-line component based on a panel or schematic component already inserted while working on a one-line diagram. A new option is available to make it easier which filters a list of components based on whether there is already a matching one-line symbol present.
7. Schematic Terminals: The tool provides options to hide the tag strip, location and installation attribute values if the users inserts schematic terminals using the Multiple Insert commands.
All these new set of features helps designers to build electrical circuits and boards more efficiently and quickly with AutoCAD Electrical 2016.