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Autocad Electrical Users


feargt

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Hi,

 

I am looking for any comments or advice from users of Autocad Electrical, a department in my firm are considering using it but those that are considering it are not in a position to really judge it as they will not be using it themselves. So basically I am looking for any information (excluding informtion provided on the Autodesk website) from peolpe who are actually using it with regard to ease of use, implementation, productivity etc.

 

Thanks in advance

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I think we've been asked this before, but I'm not sure we've got anybody who actually uses it, though we do have people who work in electrical

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Thanks for the reply Strix,

 

Based on the reply from Strix, Is there any users out there that already considered using Autocad Electrical but decided against it, and if so for what reasons.

 

Thanks

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there are a couple who use it but none of the "regulars".

 

we have had a couple of demos and it looks interesting. We are not too sure about its usefullness as a pure electrical package but the tools for creating small panels is impressive and we can see a big advantage in using the automatic BOM generation.

 

It is on our list but so far we can't justify the extra expense.

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In our scenario, the expense is not the problem, the problem is a combination between those that are considering making the purchase and switching from Vanilla autocad to Electrical have no experience of using either program, and the users that would be using the program are in my opinion far from what I would understand from the term power user.

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if the expense is not an issue then go for it. You can use the vanilla AutoCAD environment and remain blissfully unaware that you have electrical. Then as you get more suitable projects you can slowly introduce it. When the AutoDesk reseller was here he explained that you can create your "electrical intelligent" drawing and then modify it in vanilla. When it next is opened in electrical the program will fix any broken intelligence.

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now that sounds a heck of a lot more versatile than any of the packages I've used that are supposed to do the same job :)

 

The last electrical job I did, the company had the software but were so snowed under that they didn't have time to spare for anybody to do the training course to be able to use it

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yes, we were put off going for electrical by the introduction we had to a similar package. Don't people realise they do more harm than good telling us "it does this" when clearly it doesn't?

 

after our demonstration of electrical we almost went for it - but only for the BOM part, not the electrical part. It couldn't be configured to meet our company standard for wire end markers and we were told that our standard was wrong!

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Well I can't say anything as far as cost goes because I don't have anything to do with getting the software... But I do use Electrical on a daily basis and have been for a little over 2 years. The thing about electrical is learning to use all the attributes to your advantage. If you can create the symbol that your company uses as a standard and insert the needed attributes. Then your symbol will work just like the ones provided by the program. Electrical is extremely versatile as long as you can get an understanding of how it works. My company really doesn't use any of the symbols provided by the program, so there was time spent in creating those. But since they have been created, the ease of setting up Ladders, Circuits, I/O Cards, and even Enclosure drawings is near effortless. Really the only thing that takes time is based on how large the project is. We had a project not too long ago that was near 340 sheets... But we were able to complete the whole thing within six or seven weeks.

 

Now I do recommend just taking a basic one day, or I believe around here they even offer a 3 day, class just to get you started. Since you already have a good understanding of AutoCAD, you should catch on to this very easily.

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that's the thing with these packages, they seem to mostly have been written to only allow new installations, where most of the work I've been involved in has been refurb or upgrade to existing. The work which would be required to input all the old drawings for the existing plant instead of just editing them (some with the addition of only one component or uprating of a motor) is pretty prohibitive

 

If you could open an old ACAD drawing but insert ACAD Elec elements to get your BOM for a refurb job, that would be invaluable

 

Don't get me started on overriding auto wire numbering either :glare:

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If y'r looking at electrical you must look at the other disciplines as well.

 

Try ASMEIL'ing for starters will save your co. 1000's of hours and everything will be co-ordinated.

 

It's all in the layers and drawing things' once.

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