Using AutoCAD Toolsets: To Infinity and Beyond!

VOLKER COCCO: The test. How's everybody doing? I was going to say good morning, but that wouldn't work this time of day.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

VOLKER COCCO: I guess if you're still on another time zone it might.

VINOD KUMAR BALASUBRAMANIAN: [INAUDIBLE]

VOLKER COCCO: That's right. I think we have about 30 seconds or so, but yeah. Welcome, everybody. We'll get into the nuts and bolts here in a few minutes-- or not few minutes, a few seconds. It's been a long day. Hey, how's everybody doing at AU? Having a good time? Learning a lot? Anybody burned out yet? No. Yeah.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

VOLKER COCCO: Yeah. Well, only got one more day for most of us, so it's always good when you make it through the week. It's tiring, and you're kind of like, one of my last classes is actually tomorrow. I think it's like the last class of the day. And those are the fun ones. Everybody's kind of bleary eyed, and-- yeah. Oh, well, we deal with it.

So welcome to this class, and I'll do some introductions in a moment. But a couple of questions here-- first of all, how many of you have installed any the 2019 software? A few of you. How about the toolsets that go with it? OK. Good. If you have, I mean not a bad thing. It's just I don't want to waste your time either because what we're going to show you is what these toolsets are about, what is available to you.

And we will try to keep it exciting, because we can't do a lot of demo. There's just a lot of stuff to show you. All right. That said, if at any point you feel the class isn't for you, there are other events going on here. So I want you to get the most for the money and time you're spending. And you'll hurt our feelings. But we'll be good with it, OK.

So, yeah. Just make it worth your while here. And one more question. How many people have worked say with AutoCAD for about three years? And that would be Release 2018. How many? 17.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

VOLKER COCCO: '14? 2014 right now? OK.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

VOLKER COCCO: Oh, '18 now. Yeah. All right. OK. Well, I'm going to go ahead and get started with the introductions here. And no idea where that is. So this is us. It's not really us. OK. But it is. It's about us. So my name's Volker Cocco. And I work for Autodesk. Just brief history here. At one time I did do AutoCAD drafting. I started back-- well, it was Release 10, so 1990 I think it was.

And there's a lot of people here at AU who have been doing it longer than I have. It's not a race. But it is good to know that we have some experience with the software, not just out of a book. I've also been a CAD manager. A lot of my time was spent customizing AutoCAD. That was what I really enjoyed doing, still enjoy doing it.

In fact, my class tomorrow night is going to be on customization. I've worked for several resellers, and I started with Autodesk 2011. So seven years right now. And I am with the technical support staff. I'm the, they call it a knowledge domain expert. Really doesn't mean I know a lot more than anybody else on our team. Just I know where to go to when I need answers we can't get anywhere else.

So yeah. That's it for me. I'm out of the Portland office, our new office, downtown Portland. So I am, since Quentin is listed next, I'll let Quentin introduce himself. And then Mr. Casual, Vinod over here. I'll let him introduce himself afterwards.

QUENTIN CONTRERAS: No, Mr. Potato head over there. He wants me to go next. Hi, everybody. I'm Quentin Contreras. I am a technical support specialist as well. I've also done some work with our Enterprise Support customers, so some of you all that are in here. Do we have any EP customers in here right now? Great. Good to see you.

So I've been with Autodesk going on about seven years now. I've mainly dealt with AutoCAD, P&ID, Plant 3D. Starting to support a little bit more with Electrical as well. So those are some of the toolsets that are associated with AutoCAD and how the verticals fall in line. I am based out of the Portland office as well, with Volker.

And I am originally from Texas, so my background, with being Plant 3D, mainly comes from that. Because most of the CAD work that I did was in the oil and gas industry. I did a lot of work with ammonia refrigeration as well, mainly designing P&ID schematic diagrams for existing facilities is what I did.

So I've done a lot of customization with P&ID, just because of the company that I worked for, we worked for various different companies. So we'd have to go in and customize based on their standards in order for us to create P&IDs that they needed to facilitate with their workflow. So that's a little bit about me and I'll hand it over to Vinod.

VINOD KUMAR BALASUBRAMANIAN: Yeah, right. I thought you were going to say Mr. Potato. I don't know why you guys want to put me on Mr. Potato. Anyway.

VOLKER COCCO: Somebody had to be there.

VINOD KUMAR BALASUBRAMANIAN: Yeah, right.

QUENTIN CONTRERAS: Because he's so flexible, he can just do anything.

VINOD KUMAR BALASUBRAMANIAN: Right. Yeah, thanks Quentin and Volker. So I'm Vinod. I'm based out of Singapore office. And I've been with Autodesk for almost a decade now. And I'm primarily in charge of toolsets from the support perspective. And I manage any business escalations, [INAUDIBLE], EP business escalations, or product issues that I can manage it with the product development team.

And then I'm responsible for the knowledge content that you guys utilize from the self-help and the help that comes within the product. So any questions or any challenges that you face with the help, feel free to ask us today. We'll be happy to take them for you guys.

VOLKER COCCO: Yeah, actually to add on to that, we're all responsible for that content. Not so much the help documentation itself, but the articles on the knowledge network. So we write them, we correct the ones that were written years ago, and add onto them, and we learn a lot doing it.

And speaking of learning, as far as the toolsets go here, we all have had experience with pretty much all of these products here. And we're not experts with all of them, but we've had experience with them. And what we're going to try and show you is, well one, what those tools are. And how as an AutoCAD user, even if you aren't going to use the technology with a specific application, how you might be able to use some of the functionality in those tools to be a little more productive or even-- lost my train of thought.

Productivity is a good thing, though. So well go with that one. All right? So anyway there's quite a few products here. And we'll go ahead and get started. And there are three different areas we'll touch on. The bullet points in the original write-up that we did is encompassed in these three bullet points here. So we're going to start up with the specialized toolsets, and just take a look at what tools are available and how to access those tools.

We actually get a lot of questions about accessing the toolsets. And one of the common-- I think it was, I don't want to say a misrepresentation, but I don't know what else to call it. The toolset verbiage leads a lot of people to believe that it's one product, when it's not. It is kind of. It's a hybrid of AutoCAD, but you still need to install the tools that you wish to work with. And we'll get a little bit more into that in a moment.

We are really excited about having all these products together though, because every one of these is built on Core AutoCAD. And there is a lot of interaction between end users with all these products. So let's go ahead and start with those specialized tools. And what you're seeing here is pretty much a good representation of what we're getting. You have the Mechanical toolset, Architecture, Electrical, Map 3D, MEP, Plant 3D, Raster Design.

You may not use all of these, but you'll see that AutoCAD is at the bottom. That's the base. So when you install any of these tools, you aren't actually installing separate applications. In fact we'll show you, after we show you how to get the toolsets, how they are installed on the AutoCAD Core Platform.

And again, some of these you may not use. But if you don't know what's in them you'll probably never use them. Either way it's one AutoCAD. And I think I'm going to turn it over to Vinod for a moment.

VINOD KUMAR BALASUBRAMANIAN: Right. OK, so how many of you have used Autodesk Account Portal to kind of download the software? Right. So, some of you know how to go there. So I'm going to do a quick demo. Let me go ahead and actually change the settings here. OK. So you can go to Autodesk Account-- oops.

So you can go to Autodesk Account by typing manage.autodesk.com. Once you hit manage.autodesk.com then you will see the landing page like this. This been recently changed, the UI has been. So if you have used in the past it will be pretty much white in color, and now we have a blue to make it look like similar to Autodesk theme.

So on the left side you see products and services. This is where you download all your products actually. So to download the toolsets, so the toolsets are not part of AutoCAD. So it's not an integral part of AutoCAD. So if you install AutoCAD doesn't mean that toolsets gets installed.

So often I get a question around like, OK, is the toolsets an MSI file? Can I load it with AutoCAD? Is the toolsets like in a profile where I can change my profile, I can get AutoCAD Mechanical or Electrical toolsets? Not. We're going to show you how the toolsets will look like. So if you go in to Products and Services, then you click All Products and Services.

OK, great. Autodesk account has come through pretty fast. Yeah. So here you can see AutoCAD. And, well--

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

VINOD KUMAR BALASUBRAMANIAN: OK. Under the industry?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

VINOD KUMAR BALASUBRAMANIAN: OK. Yeah. OK. Now--

VOLKER COCCO: Let me just interrupt for a moment.

VINOD KUMAR BALASUBRAMANIAN: Yeah.

VOLKER COCCO: So your interface may look a little different as far as the toolsets go. They may be all listed in a linear fashion, or maybe if you have some kind of a collection which was converted it's going to show a little different. But they're all going to be there. And we actually do get a lot of questions about this, and I'm just going to interrupt Vinod a little bit longer here.

How many of you are managing your Autodesk account? OK. So I'm going to assume the rest of you have a IT or CAD manager who does this for you. Do you have your own Autodesk account that you sign into your software with? Anybody not, let me ask that. OK. Because we get a lot of people who aren't even signed into the software.

They don't know about the updates. Right now, even with 2019 we've had several updates. And even 2018. And with 2019, even though it's been out for over a half a year, only about 80% of the users have installed any updates. And so you're missing out on a lot of functionality if you aren't updating that software. Not just fixes. I mean a lot of features as well.

VINOD KUMAR BALASUBRAMANIAN: So your toolsets will be just right below AutoCAD. It will show up as AutoCAD Mechanical, Electrical, Architecture, and so on. So you have to click each one of them, and then press download to download those toolsets. So each toolsets you have to download separately. So unfortunately there is no one single installer for toolsets.

But you still can use a single serial number to activate all your toolsets, or with your single sign on you should be able to get to all your toolsets. Just now Volker was talking about product updates, because that's a very key thing that keeps your software most stable and reliable, right. So there are multiple ways through which you can install software updates.

The one thing is, when you install AutoCAD or any of the toolset, there is a tool that gets installed called Autodesk Desktop App. Have anyone used this? Right.

QUENTIN CONTRERAS: How many of you all just close it and get it out of your task bar? That's not a good idea because you want to have it running, because it's going to notify you when those updates are available. So if something comes out like next week you'll get notification that it's there for you to apply.

VOLKER COCCO: That includes new releases.

VINOD KUMAR BALASUBRAMANIAN: So if you haven't done it, so what I would recommend is go ahead when you have time, just go ahead and launch this toolset. And then you will see under the My Updates section, all the updates that you need to install for current release or even the previous releases. Some of you had 2018, '17 release. It will also show all the updates that you need, including the toolsets updates.

They are listed more structurally here. So you'll have AutoCAD and then Mechanical, Electrical, and so on. So you can click and download whichever the toolset updates that you need to install. So this is one way of downloading. Sometimes the IT Managers restrict you from installing this desktop app.

So in that case, the other way to do that is under Autodesk Account, under manage.autodesk.com. Here on the Product Updates you should be able to see all the updates that you need. So I hope it refreshes quickly.

QUENTIN CONTRERAS: Obviously yours shouldn't take this long. Volker has like every program installed on this computer.

VINOD KUMAR BALASUBRAMANIAN: Yeah. So even if it's a small filter, assuming you have a lot of products in your company. So here is a small filter for you to work with the updates more accurately. So you can filter them by product, you can filter them by updates and so on. So here are like, say, if I want to look only at hot fixes, then I can go ahead and choose. Or if I want to look at all the service packs then I can go ahead and select that, and it will automatically filter out only those service packs that are-- like see here?

So we have a latest update for Mac, so that you can go ahead and just download and keep your software updated. So that's one piece that we want to highlight, where you can download from Autodesk account and how you update your software. So the other point that Volker talked just few minutes back was around how does the toolsets install, and how do you verify whether the tools that are installed.

So let me go ahead to the C drive here. So when you download and install the toolsets it installs in the C Program Files folder like how AutoCAD gets installed. So let's go ahead and see where it is actually. So if you go here under C Program Files, and obviously all Autodesk products gets installed under Autodesk folder by default. You can change this folder as well. It's not compulsory that it has to be, but it's better it can be in the same folder, unless you know what you're doing with the changes. Because you have to make those changes within the AutoCAD to understand all the relevant files are there or not.

Now here, under Autodesk, you have an AutoCAD 2019 folder. When I double click this you see there are different folders here. So you have AutoCAD Electrical there. So similarly you will and then you will have ACA and ACA MEP. So that means those are all the toolsets. Each toolsets will be installed as separate folders here.

So why do we do that? In the past, in 2016 or '17 release, if you install a toolset separately it will be under Autodesk folder. It'll be called as AutoCAD Architecture or AutoCAD Mechanical. Now it's all running under the AutoCAD platform. So you are having AutoCAD already installed. So the toolsets will utilize the AutoCAD platform and just install whatever needed for the toolsets.

We're going to walk you through what are the things in the toolset. So those things alone just gets installed here. By going here you can actually find out what are the folders that are installed, and based on that you can be sure that what toolsets have been installed along with AutoCAD. So this gives one other flexibility that if you are running on low hard drive space, obviously if you have to install multiple toolsets, there is a AutoCAD platform already there. It's just going to put only a couple of toolsets down there. It's not going to occupy a lot of your hard drive space.

And that's why we call it as one AutoCAD, because it's all running on an AutoCAD platform.

VOLKER COCCO: I'm going to interrupt again for a moment. So in the past if you were to install several different flavors of AutoCAD, the verticals, you'd be installing the sample files for both of them using up space that way. This way it doesn't do that anymore. The other thing we talked about the desktop app. I know a lot of people dismiss it. But we do have updates specifically for some of the toolsets, and some specifically for AutoCAD. And a lot of times we get the question, well, which one do I install? In what order do we install them?

One of the nicest things about that desktop application is that it will install any updates you need in the order that they need to be installed. So keep that in mind if you're dismissing that particular app. It does have great functionality. So, let you continue.

VINOD KUMAR BALASUBRAMANIAN: Yeah, OK. Great. So let me go ahead and pull the presentation back on. OK. So, oh. OK. So let's get going. OK, now that we have seen how toolsets gets installed and how you update your toolsets and how you verify where the toolsets are, let's get on to what each toolsets are. And then we'll talk a little bit about each of these toolsets, what they do for you.

So we'll start with-- you saw that nice cylinder there. We'll go in the same hierarchy. So we'll start with AutoCAD Mechanical toolsets. It's probably one of the most often-used toolsets here. So we're going to talk a little bit about what's in this toolset. the very first thing that I want to highlight on Mechanical toolsets is as you see here there is around 700,000 standard parts.

Like say you want to create in AutoCAD like screws, nuts, and bolts. You need to take a lot of time, create those blocks, put it on to Design Center, make it available for all users within your company. Those kind of things you don't need to do anymore because it's already available there, the standard content, which is close to a million content that is already available for you to download and utilize, which is automatically installed as well when you install Mechanical toolsets.

And these standard contents are primarily based on international standards like NC, DIN, BS, Japanese standards and so on. And also, we have covered almost all the international standards around here, so if you want to use a specific standard from Australian standard you could able to go and pick that from there as well.

And then other than that, within that standards-- OK, so yeah, standard contents are great, but my company have our own custom standards. So we create our own screws and bolts, and we want to use our own library. Yes you can do that. You can create your own custom content. Those are configured as database files, so you can share those database files across your network. And you can also control the edit access. So who can edit those custom content and so on.

And you can also do a detailed documentation, design documentation. This is pretty crucial for somebody working in the shop floor. So if you want to have all detail, dimensioning in the drawing, which we're going to talk in a few minutes --which is predefined already as part of the toolsets content, but you can also modify that for your custom content as well.

And then the next one is engineering dimensions, smart engineering dimensions. That's part of Mechanical. So I believe all of you have used the AutoCAD dimensions more than any other feature within AutoCAD. So what is different in Mechanical toolsets is Mechanical toolsets has Power Dimensions.

So what is Power Dimension different from plain AutoCAD Dimension. So I want to highlight two things that are different in Power Dimensions. The very first thing is auto-dimensioning. So for example you have created like five different views. You have created a front view, you have created a side view, and then you have created an isometric view.

In AutoCAD you have to dimension each one of them separately. But in Mechanical what you can do is you can select that drawing view, and then you can press auto-dimension within the ribbon, or through the command line, if you're familiar more with command online. And it'll auto-dimension that view for you. So you will have all the dimensions automatically. The standard dimensions, the linear dimensions, and the radial dimensions. All those gets created.

And then you can later modify those dimensions as well. Within three to four clicks you will have the dimensions for all the views that you have created. And then finally, you can also dynamically update your dimensions. What does this mean? So for example, if you have created your drawing view, OK, so I want to create three more views on the drawing sheet.

My sheet is only a four, and it's totally full. I want to scale the drawing view down. But then the problem is I have already put in my dimensions. What will happen to the dimensions? So the dimensions can auto-scale to whatever the drawing view scale as well. So you don't need to rescale your dimensions. Unlike in AutoCAD you have to rescale them.

And then the next one is reusable mechanical drawing detail tools. So this is primarily what we want to highlight is there are two features when it comes to reusable mechanical drawing detail tools. The first one is AM layer. So again layer managers, all of you are familiar with the layer managers in AutoCAD. It's another feature that everybody would be using on.

And AutoCAD Mechanical layers are much more of flexibility than what you have in AutoCAD, because the Mechanical layers are driven by the drawing standards, which means you can set what the layer behavior has to be in the drawing template itself. And then another thing with AutoCAD Mechanical layers is, for example you have a cross-hatch that's on a particular layer group. And if you want to turn the cross-hatch without turning off the layer group, you can do that pretty well with Mechanical layer.

So you cannot do that in AutoCAD. So that's the flexibility that we are talking about with respect to drawing detailing tools. And another one is, this is my personal favorite, which is detail views. So drawing views are the most powerful one in AutoCAD Mechanical. Detail views, good thing with detail views is like-- so if you have like a complex geometry that you are trying to create drawing views on, like say you want to have a complex assembly that you want to create a drawing view, and obviously you want to look at a particular section of that assembly that you want to project to your project managers or someone to highlight where you are making changes onto.

So you can quickly create a detail view from the drawing view panel. And again, with the auto-dimensions you can able to auto-dimension them. And then you can make subtle changes to that detail view while placing itself. Like say I want to change the drawing border of that detail view. I want to change the color of the detail view, how it needs to look. I want to change annotations of that detail view.

Everything can be done in the dialogue itself before you place the detail view. So that's the flexibility that these detailing tools that provide from Mechanical. And then the next one is machinery generators and calculators. So a lot of people don't know that AutoCAD Mechanical has a small finite element analysis tool. So what it basically has is it's not as robust as like in Inventor, but it still does a lot of job.

So if you have a beam you want to calculate-- if you want to calculate a deflection, or you want to calculate some moment of inertia on the [INAUDIBLE], you can able to do that with AutoCAD Mechanical. And then shaft generator. So this is my personal favorite when it comes to designing in AutoCAD Mechanical. So if you want to create a solid or a hollow shaft and add different type of threads.

Again, threads are available as part of standard content. So you don't need to create all those threading. You can just use any of them. Again, you can customize them as well. And the shaft generator does the calculations that you need, what type of thread you need to put, what type of [INAUDIBLE] I need to use with the shaft. All those things are already predefined, and you can use that tool to get the shafts created quickly.

Now two other tools that I really want to highlight is Bill Of Materials and Parts List. So how many of you actually work in kind of a mechanical industry where you have to handle Bill of Materials every now and then? Right. So normally people use Excel spreadsheet and work with the procurement on getting the competence that they need for manufacture, right.

So to do that, again, with AutoCAD you have to create your own tables on different components that you need. And then you have to export to Excel. And then you need to make sure every time your table is updated to Excel, and if the data link function has any issues then you're losing the updated Excel spreadsheet for your Bill of Materials.

But what Mechanical does is you have a robust Bill of Material tool, which allows you to configure automatically all the components that you want to add into the Bill of Materials. So for example, if you have a set of pots that you want to put it in the Bill of Materials, you can create a pot reference. It automatically goes into the Bill of Material database. And this database is stored within the drawing.

So now, OK, so the Bill of Materials is stored within the drawing. Now can I share this Bill of Materials with another department? Yes, you can do that. You can export the BOM and share it with someone. The only caveat here is, so if you are exporting the other person should have AutoCAD Mechanical to import that Bill of Materials, because it's a database file.

But if you want AutoCAD users to utilize it then you have another feature called Parts List. Parts List are primarily intelligent tables, intelligent AutoCAD tables, that link with the Bill of Materials. So whenever you make any changes to the Bill of then it automatically updates this table. And then another cool feature of Parts List is, this is how the Parts List looks like, so it's a simple AutoCAD table that you can see.

You can modify this again on the fly, how it needs to look and feel. It's much more flexible than in AutoCAD table editing. Now, if you want to share this data with an AutoCAD user you can very well do that. You can just export this table into Excel or a Access metadata file. And then they can link it back into the AutoCAD table.

As long as their data link works fine, whatever changes you make in the BOM, the Parts List gets automatically updated. And the user who is having the AutoCAD to open that will also have that spreadsheet updated. Isn't that cool, so because you don't need to make sure that everyone is using the right Bill of Materials, as long as you store your drawing in a shared location and have your Excel spreadsheet in the same location and update it, so all AutoCAD users and Mechanical users will have your Parts List updated for your Bill of Materials.

So that's the cool thing about AutoCAD Mechanical. So I want to hand over to Volker to talk a little bit about Architecture toolset.

VOLKER COCCO: That sounds great. Thanks Vinod. So you can tell he's passionate about his Mechanical, right? I'm more passionate about AutoCAD and how I can make these tools work for me. And Architecture, AutoCAD Architecture is very similar to Mechanical, and I think you'll see this later with some of the other verticals as well. There's a lot of database-driven activity. We work with styles, and the objects in these particular applications are very intelligent.

So AutoCAD Architecture, for example, knows that a wall is a wall. If I take a window it knows it's a window, and it knows it can fit in that wall. And it will insert it in the wall where I want it. If it doesn't fit, if there's a problem with code, a standards code of some kind, it's going to warn you. The reason I chose to talk about the architectural side is not because of this stuff here, OK.

This stuff is a lot like what Vinod just talked about in Mechanical. It's all the intelligence, the data driven. We're AutoCAD users, so how can I make this work for me? Well, there may be times-- how many of you have drawn a room, put in walls and windows? OK, just a couple? OK. Well, that's fine. I mean still. Let's take a look at it this way, because we're going to keep this one here a little short.

This is what AutoCAD does. We've been through a process similar. In order to draw walls, we draw a polyline. We would then offset it a little bit. We would perhaps break the line in order to plop in a window. Plop is a technical verb, verbiage there. And then we may have to extrude the wall as well. We may want to throw in an opening of some kind. It's very time consuming.

With AutoCAD Architecture that job is very fast. We draw the walls in 2D, just like we would line work. Then we select our window, plop it in there. It knows it'll fit in there. If it doesn't it gives you a warning. And you can choose a different style. Everything is style based. So you need a concrete wall, that's what you put in there. You need a-- I don't know, a table, window, or what is it? Yeah. Yeah, you know. You plop those in there.

It does all this work for you in 2D. You switch over to Paper Space, and you see those views in 3D as a 3D structure. If you don't want to have it as a 3D structure you don't have to. If you need to have somebody just in generic AutoCAD work with it you can export it to AutoCAD. Voila, you're finished with that part of the job.

And this is one of the functions that I really like about AutoCAD Architecture is that we have this ability. All this stuff is stored on a palette very similar to your tool palettes. It's called a Content Browser. I think that's what it's still called. They've changed the names a couple of times, but you'll see we have different styles of openings here. And you can certainly create your own. Manufacturers have parts available for download that you can use instead of the built-in components.

But again, there are thousands and thousands of different styles and catalogs to choose from. But the bottom line is I'm working with AutoCAD. This is a great way for me to start the foundation of my house. So that's AutoCAD Architecture, and Quentin and Vinod, AutoCAD Electrical.

VINOD KUMAR BALASUBRAMANIAN: [INAUDIBLE]

QUENTIN CONTRERAS: OK, thanks.

VINOD KUMAR BALASUBRAMANIAN: This is another favorite toolset of mine, AutoCAD Electrical. This is actually an odd man out in all the other toolsets, because other toolsets usually are drawing-based like AutoCAD. AutoCAD Electrical is slightly different. It's actually project-based. So that gives you more controls on structuring your drawings and arranging them in various folders that you want to. And also while plotting it has more functions to how you can plot multiple drawings or projects and so on.

So I'll share that in a moment now. So again, like Mechanical, so AutoCAD Electrical has 65,000 intelligent electrical symbols. So where are these symbols coming from? So these symbols are coming from our manufacturer catalog. So you probably know all the most common electrical manufacturers, ABB, Siemens, [INAUDIBLE], and plenty of them.

So we have around like 13 manufacturers who we work with on a regular basis to get all their standards updated. And so all their schematic symbols and panel layouts all gets stored as standard content under the catalog. So now another thing is, normally it's AutoCAD Electrical. Everybody wants to create schematic layouts and panel layouts. They have flexible tools within AutoCAD Electrical just to create a schematic layout.

So what you're seeing here is a simple preview of a schematic layout which can be done in probably within 5 to 10 minutes, as long as you know what else you're drawing in and what PLCs that you want to bring in for connection. And another thing, since many of you are AutoCAD users, so another thing that I actually want to highlight is efficient tool for automate swapping of blocks.

So what it means is like you often would have a block created in AutoCAD drawing, and you have used it across maybe 10 drawings. And then you wanted to update that block. So you used a ATTSYNC command. It will update only the attributes. It may not update the graphical structure of that drawing. And often you have hustle to update your block. Even Design Center doesn't do that much effectively.

So what Electrical does is there is an AE Swap Block command which allows you to pick the existing block anywhere within the project. That means you have 100 drawings where the block is used, it'll just convert everything to the updated block within few seconds for you. So your block gets updated within few seconds, with all the graphical changes and attribute changes as well. So you don't need to make any changes to that.

And then the next one is Plot Project tool. So this is something similar to the published feature in AutoCAD, when you try to publish multiple drawings. But the one cool thing with Plot Project is it gives you control on what type of settings that you want to plot from within your project.

So let me give you one example. So you have an electrical drawing. Let's say you have a couple of electrical drawings. So you have a wire starting on the first drawing and ending up and connected to a component on the second drawing. So now once you plot this to PDF how do I know that the first wire and the second wire on the second sheet is connected? So while doing a Plot Project there is a function called Surfer.

When you enable Surfer what happens is when you are in the PDF, at the end of that first wire, if you're going to click that it will automatically take you to the second most connection where it is, to the component that is in the second drawing sheet. And so by this you don't need to really worry that how I can navigate on my wires if they are too long and they are into multiple sheets. So you can easily do that using that Surfer function that is embedded into the Plot Project function.

Now, the next one that I also want to talk about is automatic report generation. So AutoCAD Electrical has three different types of reports, schematic report, panel report, and drawing list report. So what these reports actually do is like-- we talked about Bill of Material reports from AutoCAD Mechanical, right? Any electrical engineer want to give his report on wiring diagrams and what he has done with what type of wires he need, what type of switches he need, what type of push buttons he need.

And if it's a panel then he probably needs far more information. So this electrical reporting feature allows them to create all those things as a report. And you can share it again in Excel format, or any database file format that can be read with AutoCAD or any of the other toolsets. So this helps you more in collaboration as well when you're working with another user with a different toolsets, or he's working with AutoCAD.

So another thing is schematic symbol library. So again, if you want to create switches, you want to create push buttons or fans, any electrical component in AutoCAD, you have to again create blocks, create attributes, intelligent attributes to make sure they are connecting to each other and talking to each other. So in Electrical the schematic symbol libraries actually carries lot of predefined blocks with intelligence there.

You just have to select it from the icon menu. And then just place it across there. And voila, you have all the symbol that you need to connect to the wires. And they are, again, based on the industry standard, so IEEE, NFPA. I think NFPA is more used in the United States. So again, as I mentioned before, it's project based. Obviously you can structure these drawings more effectively. So you want to keep some of those drawings that are-- say, you want to bring Mechanical toolsets drawings into Electrical project.

You can them in and then structure them on separate folders, and then you can have your electrical wiring diagrams as well. So for example you have a mechanical equipment and you want to overlay your electrical wiring diagram on top. Then you can easily do that because you have the ability to control it from the project itself.

And then the next one, this is again my personal favorite, is wire numbering. So assume you have created like 100 wires. And in AutoCAD you have to tag them separately, each one of them. It's such a cumbersome process to do that. In AutoCAD Electrical so you have created 100 wires and they are in multiple drawings. And I want to have all of them having wire numbers there.

So how do I do that? Just there is an auto wire numbering update. You can control that whether you need by drawing, or you need by individual wires, or individual relationship between the wires that you can establish as well. And then once you select auto wire numbering it will automatically do the wire numbering for you.

And if you, again, like what I said while plotting to PDF. Similarly like if you have your drawing, first drawing has a wire, and second drawing has another wire that's connected to that, AutoCAD Electrical has the intelligent, and it's going to put the wire number, let's say 1 for that first drawing, the same wire that's connected to the second drawing as 1 as well. So you don't need to pre-check whether have I done the wire numbering correctly.

So the software has an intelligence on putting those things quite efficiently. And wiring, as far as wiring is concerned, these are simple lines what you draw in AutoCAD. So if you draw a single line or a series of lines, but you draw it in a wire layer-- so when you draw it on a wire layer, AutoCAD Electrical understands that this is a wire, and not a normal AutoCAD line, and will start to take intelligence for a wire layer.

So that's the cool thing of AutoCAD Electrical wiring. So yeah. So one last thing that I actually want to highlight in wiring is Multibus and Ladders. So here you can see a short preview of how the ladders look like. So if you want to create a set of wires with the relationship between the parent and the child, so you can do that using this ladder command.

And then another one I want to highlight is this catalog lookup. So when you draw your wires and then you put your component there, how do you know that it has inherited like maybe Siemens catalog data? So what you can do is when you place that component, there is a small catalog lookup dialogue, what you see here. And then which helps you to go to those catalogs, Siemens catalog or ABB.

And then go browse the list of-- like say you want to insert a fan or a switch, and then it lists all the type of switches available there. And you can click which switch you want, and then you can place it across. Then you have the switch placed on the wire. So that's when--

QUENTIN CONTRERAS: And you mentioned-- I want to add one more thing.

VINOD KUMAR BALASUBRAMANIAN: Yeah go ahead, sorry.

QUENTIN CONTRERAS: I've started supporting Electrical as well and working with customers. And AutoCAD Electrical has been around a pretty good long time now. So it is one of the tested products that's currently with your toolsets as well. There are a lot of features built in to the electrical program that if you do any wire-type diagramming I would highly suggest that you download it, try it out. Just because the workflow that you're going-- just time you're going to save with your workflows, you'll benefit by using this program. I'm excited to start learning it more because I want to see everything more that it does.

VINOD KUMAR BALASUBRAMANIAN: Just want to add to what Quentin said. So there is, in Autodesk Knowledge Network there is a Hitchhiker Guide for Electrical, which actually has a list of basic features like what we are talking here, with videos there on how to use, how to insert a wire, how to work with a panel layout. Everything is detailed, defined as with short videos there. I would encourage all of you to go there and have a look at it before you start working on the toolset, That will give you a very handy information on the software.

VOLKER COCCO: Great. Yeah, so I used to do Electrical when I first started out with AutoCAD. And we ended up writing LISP routines to do all this stuff that Electrical actually does now, and much more effectively. So it is a very cool application, having worked on those type of drawings. He was talking about the resources there. There is a resource document that has links in it to the documentation where you can find these tutorials and additional resources.

I'm going to talk about my second favorite application right now though. And again, this is kind of high end. But I'm going to show you a couple of cool things that I used all the time working with AutoCAD drawings. So first of all, this is a database. It's kind of like-- it is a GIS application, OK. And it allows us to analyze data. It allows us to classify objects.