Mechanical Applications for AutoCAD Electrical

This isn’t really electrical in nature. However it is about AutoCAD Electrical, and I put a bit of time into this article, so I want this group to see it as well.

http://www.cadalyst.com/cad/autocad/mechanical-applications-autocad-electrical-16515

Remember to say “Thank You” on Monday. It’s so much more than a BBQ day.

Easy Simplified Catalog Database – AutoCAD Electrical

This question just came in… “Stan is there a way to export all the parts currently in a drawing set into its own small data base because we use the same parts over and over, and the ACAD Electrical data base is just to big to be searching over our network.”

This is not the first time I have been asked this. And in fact there is a neat little utility that does just this. It’s kind of hidden under the Other Tools drop down.
 

 

It will create ALL of the family tables even if no catalog entries are needed. The default location is the active project file. However this file could just as easily replace your default catalog.

Hope this helps.

Display of Internal Part Numbers On Symbols – AutoCAD Electrical

Last week a user asked me how to push the custom USER data to symbols. He created USER1 and USER2 attributes and then edited the catalog data expecting it to update. However this information is not pushed from the database. CAT and MFG are the only columns that push to symbols. The rest of the columns are pushed to reports but not to symbols.
So the question is… Is this possible? Yep. And you already have access to it. It’s in the AutoCAD Electrical help system. It’s in the form of a sample AutoLISP utility in the "API" section of the help under Section F: ace_get_cat_data Function. The text is at the bottom of this post if you can’t find it… I can’t seem to locate the API Help in release 2013.
This LISP is currently pulling USER1, USER2, and USER3 columns from the catalog and pushing them out to selected symbols with the same named attributes.
 

Creating Keyboard Shortcuts in AutoCAD Electrical

Having started using AutoCAD at release 10 I’m partial to hotkeys. However the marking menu has broke the right click menu/hotkey ability. For example I would right click on a component and then press ‘E’ and Edit Component would trigger from the right click menu. I know the marking menu eliminates the need for the hotkey… simply drag straight up and the command starts. But hey, old habits die hard right.
I decided to map some custom hotkeys. Most of the default alias keys are commands that are not used in AutoCAD Electrical. Take ‘E’ for example. By default this is Erase. It may make more sense to have that as Delete Component or Edit Component. Below are the steps needed to modify AutoCAD’s aliases. You may wish to keep the default aliases and add and ‘E’ in front of all your new Electrical aliases. Like EE for Edit  Component and ED for Delete Component