AutoCAD Electrical Set-up

I am new to this, trying this out to see if anyone can help me.

My company is on board with switching to AutoCAD Electrical 2011. However, my boss now wants a list of what needs to be done to start using the product.

What needs to be set up or learned?

I have played around with the trial version and it is so overwhelming.

I have read other post and taken some notes. For example: I found that blocks need to be adjusted, new title blocks need to be created, set-up report layouts.

What else needs to be done in order to use the product and use it to its full potential?

Do excel templates come with the product or do they need to be created. What needs to be set up to automatically create I/O drawings, etc.?

Any Information would be great.

Thanks

Welcome to the CADTutor forum DesireeK.

I can heartily sympathize with your dilemma as we have recently purchased and started to use AutoCAD Electrical 2011. Right now we have one network license shared amongst two engineers and myself (the CAD guy).

I must agree ACADE can be overwhelming. It is definitely not that easy to understand upon first delving into it.

May I ask, did your company purchase a Subscription?

Since we wanted our electrical drawings to stand out from all our other drawings we (meaning me, myself and I...LOL) created some standard template files as our first order of business.

The blocks we have used have been primarily those supplied with the software although one of the engineers found that he needed to create some custom PLC blocks. I too experimented with creating a couple of custom symbols but it was more for educating myself than anything else.

We have not done any reports yet (I work for a chemical company and not an electrical design company) so I'll have to pass on the Excel templates question for the moment but I think I may be able to find an answer for you.

There are a handful (really, just a handful) of forum members who use ACADE but we'll do our best to help you through this.

Thanks for such a quick and useful response!!

We do currently have a subscription. But we have not purchased ACADE yet. We plan to renew our subscription along with purchasing ACADE.

Since I am the only CAD person in the office, I need to figure out how long it will take me to set everything up and be able to start working on billable projects.

Does it come with any templates or do they all need to be created from scratch?

I may be quick but some forum members will argue that I'm not always good at providing "useful" information! LOL

I'm glad to hear you are on Subscription. Once you log in and see the Welcome Page look to the left side and click on Training. At the training page browse the catalog and click on AutoCAD Electrical. Under the heading of AutoCAD Electrical e-Learning you'll find two categories that may be of use to you. They are: Learning AutoCAD Electrical 2010 - JIC (English) and Productivity with AutoCAD Electrical 2010 - JIC (English).

There are 26 tutorials under 7 headings for the first category and 25 tutorials under 8 heading in the second category. You can go through them at your own pace. Each tutorial comes with a "hands on" exercise as well as a short quiz.

Note: Yep...ACADE 2010 not 2011. Seems there wasn't enough difference between the two releases to justify an update to the tutorials.

Inside AutoCAD Electrical itself open your Help files and look on the Content tab for Tutorials. There are 19 different sections of tutorials to choose from. Each section will have one or more tutorials associated with it keyed to example drawings that come with AutoCAD 2011.

Yes, ACADE 2011 does come with its own set of template (dwt) files.

For future reference I pass along to you this link that was previously shared with me by another forum member. It is to the website of a company founded by the man deemed to be the father of AutoCAD Electrical, Nate Holt. When the page comes up look at the top and click on the link to his blog. It is chock full of useful information.

http://n8consultants.com/Customer%20Reviews.html

Regarding reports.

The Save to file button can be used to save a report to a file in formats that include ASCII, Excel, Access (database), XML and comma delimited. I think ACADE has its own default report format (bad?) but in the Report Generator dialog box there is a button one can choose to change the format of a report (good?) called, oddly enough, Change Report Format.

The reasons the tutorials were never updated is because they were the books Autodesk used to provide to Authorized Training Centers. For 2011 releases, they no longer make any books and rely on Wiley and Ascent to create courseware. Ascent has its 2011 book out already (http://ascented.com/courseware_acad_electrical_2011_fund.htm).

If you are purchasing from IMAGINiT, I won't have a problem discussing with you these concerns with ACADe and the setup involved. We have an office Albuquerque which is the closest one to you there. Unfortunately most resellers and VARs are particularly weak in ACADe knowledge. I have average an Electrical implementation about once every two months here in Ohio and there are a lot of Q&A that needs to be done to make sure you have your ducks in a row. Also, I know Nate Holt (he pretty much created ACADe and used to work for ADSK until the economy turned bad), and he wouldn't steer you wrong, but the cost would be rather high I imagine.

Here is a link to some helpful information on Electrical that will at least let you know what manufacturers are installed if you have not yet got a trial or need to show someone at work:

http://blogs.rand.com/manufacturing/2010/06/autocad-electrical-supplied-manufacturers-and-libraries.html

Hello DesireeK,

I'm new to this forum as well and I currently use AcadE 2008. I've been using it for about a year and a half so I'm no AcadE guru by any means, but I will be more than happy to help in any way that I can. I used Autocad for about 20 years to do Electrical Design prior to switching to Autocad Electrical.

P.S. The only reason I switched is because that's what they use in my current position.