Jump to content

AutoCAD MEP 2013 - Automatic descriptions for circuited devices?


MHL

Recommended Posts

So, I'm in the process of trying to teach myself how to use the MEP tools for our company, and I'm currently trial-and-error'ing my way through learning how to do electrical plans. I've figured out how to make custom styles for electrical devices (We do a lot of franchises that reuse the same equipment from job-to-job), and I've figured out how to connect said devices to panels in MEP; so far so good.

 

My question is: Is there any way to have the "description" field in the circuit manager for a particular circuit automatically fill with the name - or some other description, if need be - of a device that's placed into it? It's a massive pain to have to either fill the description in right then as I assign the device to the circuit or go back after the fact and figure out what's circuited to what.

 

I'm slightly more concerned with figuring out how to do this on the circuit manager itself, since MEP's schedules' information appears to be driven by whatever's in the circuit manager (Or, more technically, the .epd file) when it's generated, but I'd still be interested in hearing a solution that will only work from the schedules' end as well.

 

I realize whatever solution that does (or doesn't) exist might cause a conflict in the event that two or more devices share a circuit; I'm not as concerned about that, since the amount of circuits connected to a single device significantly outnumbers circuits that power more than one device. If I have to, I'd rather manually deal with a smaller number of exceptions than manually deal with everything.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I know exactly what you are saying. I finished as builds a while ago that had over 30 panels in it. Very time consuming. I don't believe there is a way. I don't think you can use text fields in circuit manager. That would be the only way I can think of trying.

 

In the end I think manually typing a description is the better way. I can only imagine the PITA trying to change a description that wants to automatically up-date to some property set definition. Sometimes you just want to make a simple change and it turns into a nitemare when the software wants to do it a different way.

 

Wait until you want to make a panel schedule that fits your company standard. That took me awhile. You may have more experience than me so maybe it won't be so bad.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Bleurgh. Well, thanks for the reply in any event. I'll start taking a look for other methods to streamline panel circuit assignment; I'm still open to any other ideas about automating this, if anyone's experimented with it before.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...