설명
주요 학습
- Learn how to insert and create fixed PLC modules
- Learn how to insert and create stand-alone PLC I/O points
- Learn how to insert and create parametric PLC modules
- Learn how to modify the Spreadsheet to PLC file
발표자
- RBRandy BrunetteRandy Brunette is the sole proprietor of Brunette Technologies, LLC, a consulting firm specializing in AutoCAD Electrical and related products including Inventor, Vault, and the Substation Design Solution (SDS) Toolkit. As an Electrical Subject Matter Expert, Randy’s duties include helping channel partners and customers through mentoring and understanding their business issues, and finding solutions that solve their challenges. Randy has been in the design field using Autodesk products for over 33 years, with experience across many different segments of the manufacturing industry. He has been in an application engineer role for 22 years, traveling through out the world providing consulting services. Randy is a top-rated speaker at Autodesk Universities, Technical Academies, and seminars. He has authored AutoCAD Electrical software training manuals, videos, and other materials.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
RANDY BRUNETTE: And welcome, everybody. Thanks for coming in this afternoon. The classroom looks pretty empty with this size. I don't know if it's because it's the last day, last thing-- block party last night took its toll on everybody? But thank you for coming to mind. I'll just jump right in. There's the class summary, all that stuff you saw. All that stuff in there. I'm going to start with introductions. What about me? Technical stuff. I'm an owner of Brunette Technologies.
Some of you might know I was working for Autodesk. That ended in March of this year, so I'm back doing this stuff. I have business cards. You can see me at the end if you're interested. I spent 33 years in the industry as a worker and designer. Started a long time ago. Yeah, 19-- 22 years of as an Application Engineer, 12 years authoring AutoCAD Electrical training materials. So I just started, like, in 2003 or 2004. And when I say that, I mean that mostly for Autodesk.
So many of the training manuals you might be using are based either-- stuff I created, or based on the stuff I created. This is my 19th year teaching at Autodesk University. I actually started in '96, and then I missed two ones-- two of them since then. I don't know what my latest streak is, but it's somewhere at 10 or 11 that I've been on a roll. So I've done it once or twice before. Less nervous now. Remember, I said it during the introductions? Class has started now. We're just rolling through whatever is going on and happening.
Here's some stuff about me. I'm from Chilton, Wisconsin. Very small town, 4,000 people. You know what that means? It means every single person in my town could check in at the Venetian and the Palazzo and have their very own room. I first saw that and thought of that when we were at the MGM Grand. It had 5,000 rooms in it. And the neighboring town could have their own room in the hotel. Of course, I'm a fan of the Green Bay Packers. Go, Pack, go. [HUMMING] Go, Pack, go. No?
I fly radio control aircraft. So I did word it this way-- drones are the popular thing. I do have drones. I fly them too, but I fly radio control planes competitively, as well. Aerobatic sequences. Think compulsories and ice skating. Same kind of thing. They have certain maneuvers they want us to do. I fly everything from real small, indoor-- these aren't indoor planes, but from small, indoor kind of stuff-- jets I have there. This is my competition plane. 104 inch wingspan.
Next year I hope to have a bigger one. Should be 120 inch wingspan. Has a 100 cc motor on it. About 10 horsepower, or something like that. The one next year would have 150 cc motor on it, so you can just imagine. Bigger. Very cool. Depending on the gas tank size, mine will fly 10-12 minutes, depending on how much throttle I use. Let's see. So if you're wondering how I stack them, I kind of call it my rack and stack system. You can see that up to there.
At last count I have over 40 different airplanes at home. It's one of those things, I just kind of collect them. They're not all that size. A lot of them are down in this size, but yeah, my wife wasn't happy. We just moved a year and a half ago, and when she finally asked me how many I had, I had to tell her. Before that, she didn't really know. First rule of any kind of flying. So we all flew here, I'm sure, right? Takeoffs are optional, landings are mandatory, right?
Once you leave the ground, you will be coming back. That is the rule, and even in RC flying, things don't always work out the way they're supposed to. Those two were two days apart. I was doing the same thing, same maneuver. Made the same mistake twice. After the second time, I knew what I did. The first time, it happened so quick I didn't even know. It was just I was flying this plane, it was a great handling plane, and all of a sudden it just went into the ground, and I go-- then I did it again two days later.
The second time, I recognized it. So for this one, I recognized it half a second too late. Or 10 feet too low. However you want to equivalate that. One or the other. It landed into a field. You can kind of see it there. I saw the plane get level, and I thought, I got a chance. And then it-- no. There was no chance. Completely destroyed. All right, student introductions. I have been having trouble talking lately, so I apologize for that. Started last night.
It was going fine all week, and then all of a sudden words aren't coming out. How many currently create schematics only using AutoCAD? I know there's at least one. Two? OK. I feel sorry for you. That's why there's a sad face up there. Literally my safe number is you can gain 20% productivity by moving to some kind of an electrical design tool. Of course I promote AutoCAD Electrical, but if you're not using something, you're wasting 20% of your time. That's my safe number.
Quick story there. I was at a customer interviewing the designers, and the manager was in the room. At the end, you know, we're going, well, how long does it take you to do this? Blah, blah, blah, you know? The guy left, and we're talking with the manager now, trying to close a sale. I said, well, your guy just said you could save 80% of your time. 80%. And I said, you won't believe that, will you? Even though his guy said it-- I didn't say it-- his guy said it. He goes no, 80% is too much.
Said, would you believe 40% of your time could be saved? He goes, yeah, 40% I could believe. Two days a week free, golfing. Flying radio controlled planes. That's what I'd be doing. So guarantee there-- how many of you, the rest of you, I assume, are using electrical now? Everybody else? OK. How many of you have seen this slide before? Come on.
I know more of you have seen that. Have many have used it more than five years? OK. I started in '96, so I think I've got most of you beat. '98? All right. Let's see-- how many of you are using something else, other than AutoCAD Electrical? Anybody? You? Mentor Graphics? Right? Are you using something-- Micro Station. I'm sorry. Yeah.
That's CAD, though. I meant an electrical design package, so something specifically for electrical schematics. And how many have attended a class of mine before this year? Come on. I see at least half of you in the room. No? Not that many? Wow. Wow. Then for those that did, this is the slide I usually show there, right? What were you thinking to come back?
What? OK. Yeah. I should have that question on there. How many didn't think it was going to be me? OK. So with that, I am going to get started. Oh-- how many of you that have seen me before were here six years ago? 2011? You saw me six years ago, in 2011? OK. Because that's six years ago. Mostly this class is the same class. This feature hasn't changed a whole lot, but I saw that it was taken off of the Autodesk University repertoire. You know, that you can go get videos on?
I said, this is something I get asked about all the time. How do I make PLCs? How do I work with them things? So I resubmitted it, and it was accepted, so now it'll be in the repertoire going forward. With my classes, by the way, everything you're seeing me do-- display, show, whatever is happening-- is online. You could teach the class next year. OK? There's my PowerPoints up there. The instruction document. You'll see me, I have a little iPad here. I'm getting my-- you know, making sure I do all the right steps.
Data set is all up online. It's one of the things I like about Autodesk University, that if you're interested in this and you want to go back and learn it, it's all available there. Detailed instructions. What's happening. OK. Let's see. I want to go to-- my AutoCAD Electrical's quit. Well, now I'm firing up AutoCAD Electrical Any questions before, while I'm waiting for this to happen? OK.
Now I feel bad. I thought this was running. And I was sitting here for 20 minutes, just wondering what to do with myself. I could have been firing this back up. Did you know in Wisconsin, our farmers are famous? Do you know why? Because they're all "out standing" in their field. Come on. I didn't say they would be good. I'm just trying to get it past the dull point. Feel free to groan during the class. You can applaud, moan-- you know, whatever it is.
Because then I know everybody is awake, and what's happening out there. OK, first of all-- oops. I gotta go back to this now. I want to stay in my PowerPoint. And we're going to go to this slide. Fixed. We're going to cover three different styles of PLC modules that AutoCAD Electrical has. Fixed, standalion I/O points, and the parametric style. How many are familiar with those? Two, three? OK. So there's going to be some new stuff for a couple of you. Excellent. I was hoping that would be the case.
First of all, fixed modules are just like every other component, right? Basically the same, except there's a few exceptions to it. These are PLC things. So they have slightly different tag names in there. You'll see tag 01, 02, 03, with the A behind it, and tag 1 up here, because we have those I/O points that have to be identified with a PLC. At least, that's how we're handling them different inside of AutoCAD Electrical. Terminal points, all the rest of these attributes are all the same kind of thing. But that's what's happening.
They're basically the same. If you're going to create one of these-- there we go. Oops. Too far. You're going to create one. There isn't any real good tools and electrical to make it-- wizardize it, you know, and make it real easy. Basically, find one that's somewhat close. Go on and modify that one, save it out as a new module. Right? That's the easiest way. You can see here I talk about finding graphics, maybe from your vendor's website, and then copying the attributes over. That kind of thing.
OK, so let's take a look at that in AutoCAD Electrical. In this presentation I'm going to be using all the same style of PLC. Same part number, everything. So as I'm going through these three or four different module types and things, it's still always the same part number. So you can just see, it's just a different way of using the same tools. So the first one says fix tool, so I'm going to insert a full unit PLC. Brings up our icon menu.
So for those that aren't using AutoCAD Electrical, this is the basic workflow for AutoCAD Electrical. We start at the icon menu. There's graphics there to show us what kind of symbol we're going to insert, so you don't have to browse out into your library files and find them. That kind of thing. Makes it very easy. In this case I want this module here. Half inch guy. And there's my module. All in one piece. And watch-- for the new people, click on the line. Did you notice what happened there?
Not only did it insert the module, it also trimmed all the lines, brought up this dialog box, where attribute information is being filled out on here. Let's see. I think I'm just going to skip and go on with it, because I get some cool stuff later on. A couple of things I want to point out. If you're used to AutoCAD Electrical, this dialog box is different. Has a couple of key points that are different with it. One of them is there is five lines of description available for every I/O point. OK?
So when you're talking a normal component, you have three lines, right? Description, 1, 2, 3. PLCs have five lines for every I/O point. Up at the top you'll see that there is a couple of description lines, line one and line two, just for the PLC component itself, right? The overall thing that it might be. And the way these all work is I pick the I/O point that I want to work with-- like, say, number six-- and now I can type in my five lines. Pick on this guy, type in my five lines, and so on. Right?
So it works differently than the standard components because PLCs have a lot more information going on with them. Let's see-- I think that's all pretty good information. You'll see because I chose this from the icon menu, and I chose a fixed unit that was in there, the part number information came in with it already. Right? It just worked a little bit differently. What is interesting about that is for those that are, I'll say, medium AutoCAD Electrical users, is you can do that with any symbol.
If you have a standard symbol that you want to insert, you can save the information right on that symbol, and insert it, and it's already there for you with the bill of material information left out. Or not left out, added to it. One of the things I will remind, again, just for the new users-- AutoCAD Electrical works on blocks and attributes. Every symbol we insert is a standard AutoCAD block, and it has specific attribute information in assigned with it. So that's all we're doing, pre-assigning attribute values.
But I could fill out that stuff. There's my PLC module inserted. Yay, I have a PLC module. Yeah, it's a little-- come on, give yourselves a hand. We've done that. All right. If I explode this guy-- so I'm just going to use my explode command and zoom in-- here's all those different values. If you bend other classes-- I know Tiffany and Rob taught two other classes-- remember, you're talking about those I/O points where the wires connect to them, right? So there they are. You can see the different numbers.
Fours are on the left because the wire comes in from the left. Terminal numbers, or the pin numbers are interchangeable. Matches with that I/O point, and then each point has a tag value with it, and so on. You can see in this particular case there's only two lines of description for each I/O point. Dialog box allows for five. Here's the normal little attributes up here. Manufacturer, catalog number, and so on. Very important to fill that stuff out, so that you can get those bill of material reports and things later on.
I'll even be running a couple of them, so you can kind of see what the results are that we're working with. So I have that first guy in here. Next, I'm going to go over to this guy. These are standalone I/O points. I'm going to show you the drawing here first, so you can see each one of these is a parent-child relationship. So as I go back and talk about this, I want you to think of a relay coil and its contacts, right? Think of that kind of symbol. This is going to be the coil. These are the contacts.
This is the parent part of the PLC, and then these are scattered I/O points that could be anywhere. In my demo I have them all on the same drawing, right? But I've worked with companies that have these scattered throughout their project. It was just they wanted to see the whole circuit. Think of, like, a loop diagram thing, right? So the push button comes in, and it completes right there, without having sort of destination arrows going back to the main PLC module. That's how they wanted to do it.
So that's what this option allows you to do. I'm going to jump back to my PowerPoint, and we'll take a look at that. Standalone I/O points. So you kind of saw what they are. They spread throughout the project drawing. You can see that I have inputs up here. Outputs. It doesn't matter, right? We can just have different symbols. They're still children. We still associate them back to the parent. We're going to do that in a live demo portion. OK, that doesn't want to work well. I'll just use the thing.
OK, you can combine inputs and outputs. The symbol name must start with PLC I/O. One of the things you'll notice is that symbol names, attribute names in AutoCAD Electrical are very important. All right, to create one of these, open an existing symbol. Alter the graphics as needed and save as a new one. Again, there's not a tool that really helps do this. Even our symbol builder, it doesn't have the rate attribute things built into it. This is just the easiest way.
And mentioning that-- remember, we're talking about blocks and attributes, right? In AutoCAD. So you can start from nothing and create one of these symbols, as long as you name the attributes correctly, and you're ready to go. Here's one of my key rules-- a little tip from your uncle Randy-- you'll see them showing up in here. And in the document. AutoCAD Electrical doesn't really care about the graphics at all. It doesn't care what it looks like, doesn't care any of that stuff. It cares about the attribute information that's on the symbol.
That's what it cares about. The graphics are for us to look at this and know what's going on. Electrical doesn't care. It looks at the attribute name and attribute information, and that's what tells it what it's supposed to do, what it's supposed to be-- all that kind of thing. That's why when I'm saying, hey, just change the graphics however you want-- I don't care. Electrical doesn't care. It cares about those attributes you saw. OK, let's see. So let's take a look at that. Back to my drawing.
So here we are. We have a couple of these spots. For this one I'm going to the icon menu. Quick browse again, for those that are new. Here's the icon menu, organized into libraries. So as some of you are trying to convince your bosses-- I know one gentleman came up ahead of time-- just this alone can save you time. How many times have you had to go try to scour, and find your symbol located somewhere, copy it from another drawing, or whatever? They're all right here.
We have 17 different symbol libraries, from NFPA, JIC, IEEE, all that kind of thing. I don't want those. I want PLC I/Os. So here you can see the fixed modules. That shortcut I showed you before it took me here. Could have came in through this way as well, and I'm going to pick this guy. The first point is the end point guy. That's the first one we are concerned with. So I'll pick on that guy-- there we go-- and insert him into my rung. Again, the same thing happens here. It's going to trim the line.
When I'm finished, I'm going to type in my I/O addresses. Let's see. Caps lock on. I colon-- 04/00. Right? All the same information. I can do a catalog lookup to assign it, and I'll remember this time it's just an individual point. I didn't select its component yet, so here's where I'm going to do the catalog lookup and assign the part number for it. And I want 1761s, to make sure we get the same part numbers that everybody has. And there's the one I'm using.
So at this point, AutoCAD Electrical already knows they're exactly the same component. And I can fill out the rest of my information, put in PIN values here, terminal descriptions-- I can fill out that information, as well. Like, I can type in here I am-- one of the reasons I like AutoCAD Electrical is I seldom have to type. Pick OK. There's my I/O point. This is a PLC inserted in the drawing. If I did a bill of material right now, I would get four PLCs out of this drawing. How come? Why would there be four listed?
Excellent so the response was I put the first one in-- that's a fixed unit. That was number one. I've put in the first two before the class started, just to have them here. And then I just put this one in-- number four. It's also why I called it I/O four and, you know, did that stuff. And this one's using numbering-- says it's the wrong number. But again, I could have used it sequential, but that would have given away what number it was. Right? Because it would have in at 1, 2, 3, 4, and we don't want to make it too easy for the questions.
All right, now I want to insert child I/O points with this. So again, if you're doing it all on the same drawing, you probably wouldn't use distributed I/O points, like I'm using here. This is just for demonstration purposes for part of the class. So now I'm looking at the next pieces. So I want the second plus. That means a child version inside of AutoCAD Electrical. And this is also going to be an input, so I'm going to pick on this guy and insert him down here.
Now, since it's a child, you'll notice that the dialog box looks different. No parent, no manufacturer information, that kind of stuff. Our job is to link it to a parent. So that's what I'm going to do-- pick up here, click on that guy, and now the I/O address comes in automatically for me. This is actually going to be the number one, right? 00. Number one. Why did I have to do that manually? Why did I have to tell it I'm using the next I/O point? Trick question, right?
Because I'm just inserting a random child anywhere in my project. Electrical doesn't really know what number it's supposed to be. Maybe in this case I'm putting in number four because our company standard is the limit switch at the end of the conveyor always goes into input four. That kind of thing. So it's up to us to still drive those numbers in there. Honestly, I just thought of a great idea. I'm wondering if I could put those into a PIN list value, and have them read in. I should probably do it like this, right?
A million different part numbers. All right, pick OK. And the same thing-- I'll just put one in quickly as one of the I/O points. So now I need a second plus out, wires going here. There's is my I/O points again. Establish it as a parent-child and go back to either one. Copy the information. This one will be two, two, and so on. Right? So there. Now I can place-- first example was put the whole thing in as one part. It's a small PLC, right? You notice I picked one that was small.
How many people really use PLCs that are 16 or smaller? Anybody? How many use them that are bigger? 64, yeah. 64 I/O, that kind of thing. They get crazy big. That's why that small one is good for very small machines. You know, put it all in at once, wearing the wiring to it. This is good for bigger ones. How big can this PLC be, that I'm doing like this? How many I/O points do you think I could put in there? As many as you want, right?
Just keep incrementing the numbers and electrical says, well, this is a big one. Comes in as one part number because it's all driven by the parent. Same thing is going to happen when we move to the parametric ones. OK, let's see. I'm signing up to there. And let's see-- yeah. So next step. So how-- if I needed to or wanted to create my own custom symbol, what would I do to do that? Remember, I said I'd create one, just Electrical doesn't care about things?
Graphics doesn't matter, but the I/O points do. So we are going to create a custom one. Ooh. Come on, give me that. Ooh. OK, good. All right. Because that's what we all do, is we create that stuff. So we're going to grab-- where are you here? I can't see very good. It's a bummer getting old. There's my I/O point. Same one we saw before, right? Same graphics you can see on it. We are going to create some new graphics for this. Remember what I said?
If you're going to create a new one, start with an existing one, and then change the graphics, and move the attributes around to where you need them to be. So there's my new graphics. I'm going to extend this line out to there, and there. And erase all of this stuff. Because I have new graphics, I don't need the old stuff anymore. Am I done? No, I'm not done. Here's a key point. So if you've attended the other classes-- I saw most of you did-- remember, we're talking about those wire connection attributes?
They are x term-- x for x some number, term 01. I need to take this guy and move him out where I want the wire to attach to. So I grab him, and I'm just going to move that out to there. AutoCAD Electrical looks at the insertion point of that symbol, and then uses it to attach to wire two. So a couple of quick things about that-- in case you didn't know, a little hint from your Uncle Randy-- you cannot change the justification of that piece. It has to be at left justified.
And it is the insertion point. So right where that little x piece is there. So if you're going to move it-- I use snap so I can make it easy, but you have to put the insertion point where you want the wire end to be. So that's what's important there. All right, I did all that. And now we are going to save that. What do you mean, how to trim the lines going up? Oh. On the other end-- that's a great question. This particular symbol is an input symbol. Input I/O point.
It does not have a wire going out the other side. On this particular case. If it was a symbol that needed a wire-- you know, was going to put it in the middle-- I'd need to put another x term 01 attribute on the other end. It would be x1, because the wire's coming in from the right-- term 02 would be that guy over there, and then electrical would know to trim the wires in between. Interesting question. And this I'm going to call dash AU. OK? So we have created a brand new symbol.
That was kind of weak, but I was trying to compete with the other class next door. They got applause somewhere. I gotta try to get it, too. All right, back to our drawing. I'm going to jump into here, and go back to my icon menu. And just down here, any time that you have you create a new symbol and you haven't yet added it to your icon menu-- let's see. This is I1T-AU. I can just type in the symbol.
Oh, then I must have typed it wrong. Well, I'll browse-- I'll cheat, and I'm going to go to-- let's see. Oh! I'm in the wrong spot. I should have been able to just type that in. What did I type in wrong? I/O, IT, dash-- no, I just typed in AU, right? You guys remember that. I gotta go find my class, and it's not in here. Oh, man. Now I feel bad for going off to other places. Autodesk University. By the way, there's my first Autodesk University, where I saved all the files.
Down to this guy. And here's my data set. There's my symbol. Oh, I had the one in. I missed that. Pick open. There's my symbol. Put it in the same way as I put in any of the other ones. I'll just put it up onto this rung here. Put in the information however I want it to be with the information, part numbers, all that kind of stuff. And you can see I've trimmed the line in. Right? So there, we've created a new symbol, inserted it into our drawing. It works the same way as every other symbol. You know why?
Because that's exactly how every symbol in AutoCAD Electrical is created, either by starting from a new one-- as long as it has those attributes in, Electrical sees it and works with it, and everything's great, and everybody's happy. Right? So number one thing people say all the time is well, we don't use those symbols. We have our own. Good. You can make them all day long, right? And put them in there, and make your own custom symbols. Electrical works with them. Doesn't care what they look like. That's a key thing to remember. Doesn't care.
All right. Let's see. Let's do a quick bill of material and see what we've all got going on here. Reports-- I'm only going to have four of them. I know one thing I didn't do. Can anybody tell me why I'm only going to have four of them? Close. I didn't add catalog material, bill of material information to that symbol. Bill of material reports only report back stuff that has catalog information on it. I didn't put it on, so I only see my four pieces in here. That was intentional, by the way, so I could test you. Yeah, I could do that, too. Great. See?
Sign of a good teacher is you recover and, you know, just blend it into the stuff. All right. Well, I found it humorous. Next, we'll go back to our presentation. We're going to talk about parametric PLC modules. The big dog of all the PLC modules. The key to these is that they-- what? Well, maybe. But what these do is they allow you to build it up, your PLC, as you're inserting it. So it's still one module, but you can see how I split it across. You can break this up into various parts.
So when we're talking about these modules, and you could have 64 I/O points, nobody has drawings that have 64 rungs going down. So we can break those and continue on to the next one. You can see I've put gaps in, breaks in, spacers in. We can control all of that stuff, how it's built depending on the manufacturer. This is where we really get into some fun stuff in the class. OK so next up, from here, creating a new PLC module. We're going to have to fill out all this information.
How many people have tried creating their own custom PLC module? Three, four, five-- how many were successful? Two. So good, right? That's why we're here in the class. So we didn't have many that tried it, I am sure, because when you opened up that dialog box, it looked like hieroglyphics. Some stuff going on in there that was just-- hoo boy. There was a lot of things happening. Hopefully when we're done here, it'll simplify all that. What's really going on. At its core, like everything, right?
Oh, guys, we gotta compete with this. At some point, going to need you-- you think so? I don't-- oh, OK. Yeah. I don't believe that, either. OK. So here's the first one. This is terminals. So terminals means connection points on a PLC. It does not mean I/O points. Those are two different numbers. So this could be, you know, positive, the power is coming in. It could be-- I've seen PLCs that just have dummy terminals on there.
But if you want to put it on a schematic, the company wants it to look like what the schematic-- you know, look like the same. So those are just terminals. This is the important one-- addressable points. They can be different, and usually are. And my example is going to have 11 in there. Now, we can insert a block at the end. In my example, I'm going to put in a dip switch on the end of it. You know, like for settings. Like, you might turn this thing, and the dip switch sets to the voltage end.
So you could add that in with your block. I was going to experiment with making that a dynamic block. I thought that would have been really cool, just to put that in, and then go back, and-- I didn't get around to it. You can also run an auto list file with this one. You insert the PLC. So maybe you need it to do something else, or you need to rename all the descriptions, or whatever you can imagine with a list file. We can have that happen, as well. OK?
And then we have moduled box dimensions, changing how the PLC looks when it gets inserted, and prompts. We're going to create all these, so I'm not going to go into too much detail now about what can be used for, and how you can use them. OK? But it seems like a lot. Here's the first thing-- module box dimensions. The symbol that comes with AutoCAD Electrical has specific settings already for a quarter inch above the first I/O point, it's going to be a horizontal line. And a quarter inch to the left, quarter inch to the right, and so on.
This is if you want to make changes to that, right? There's default values that are there, so you can override the values on here. You can also create custom line properties. So if you want something to happen different-- so for example, instead of a quarter inch we're going to make it a half inch-- or maybe you want it to-- it is a half inch, but I want to change what it looks like. So instead of it coming in with the standard symbol colors, I want to make it something else. Line type, hidden, that kind of stuff. That a sneak peek of what we're going to do.
Note here, a little tip from your Uncle Randy-- if you're going to change those properties, you have to put a value into the top spot, even if it's exactly the same as what it is now. Right, you don't have to change it, but you have to have an entry into there, or it doesn't see those other properties. Not quite sure why, but it's just one of those things that I fought through. OK, module prompts. This comes up, and it asks you about the PLCs. Things it's going to ask during the insertion point.
Ones you're familiar with-- rack number, slot number. Right? But you can also use this to create your own pieces. One of the things I'll recommend is when you're creating custom prompts, don't use one through four. AutoCAD Electrical on the PLC thing has special uses for those. Just start with number five. There's plenty there. And this one right here-- another little tip from your Uncle Randy-- I cannot tell you how many times I have clicked up here in this thing, right?
Put my entry value in, said OK, good, clicked on the next one, typed that in, and the first one's gone. You know, it's just-- you gotta hit Change on each one of those. All right? Trust me, experience there has led this up. OK, now, those of you who have seen this dialog box-- and we're all going to see it in a minute, and we're going to start working with that-- you'll see this list of terminals.
This is what is the list of how it's going to be inserted into your drawing. Each one of those describes an I/O point on the terminal. So you see these module end points. This list is how it's being created by AutoCAD Electrical. It goes down, terminal number one's here. Two, three, four, and you get to choose what you want each of them to be. OK? So think of that as a list of-- like a set of instructions for it to be built, right? Later on we're going to create a new set of pieces to put in.
Basically a way of thinking this-- I'm gonna try doing this a little bit now-- is that AutoCAD Electrical has this whole collection of different types of I/O points. Different things that act different. Some that have one wire coming in from the left, some coming in from the right. Some with wires going out the side, some are inputs, some are outputs. A whole collection of those kind of blocks. And it's going to be our job to pick one out of there, and put it into this list. For this one, I want this kind of block.
For the next one, I want the next kind of block, and so on. Think of it like a pile of LEGOs, right? You got these build things here. OK, I need one of these, and then I need a four pin, and that's kind of what we're doing here. Or going to be doing, as well. All right. So you right click on it to edit it. Multiple rows can be selected. Near the end of the class we're going to create a brand new PLC of our very own. Autodesk University PLC. Yay. Let's see. You select the category, right?
So now if you think of this pile of LEGOs, I've sorted all of the eight pin ones into one pile, all the four pins into the next pile, and so on. You know, two rows, four rows. That's what we're selecting here. Top terminals, top inputs, top outputs. One of the keys that I'll say right here-- another hint from your Uncle Randy-- boy, they're just coming hot and heavy here, I know.
Top means parent, or informative. You know, parent is what I like to think of it as. That's the one that's going to hold the manufacturer number, catalog number-- that kind of information in it. That's why you see them duplicated after that. You get input terminal output, because those are just the normal ones. That's why there's six. There's three different ones for the parents. OK, next up. Select the terminal type. And then we get the terminal attributes that we're going to fill out.
So at the bottom, when we're creating this PLC, you're going to see this. When I pick one of those from that list-- from way up here-- and I have it highlighted that I'm editing it-- then attributes for that similar are going to appear down here, at the bottom of the dialog box. You'll see it in a second. And now you can fill out those values for that symbol. Remember when we selected the one, and it came in, and it medically knew what its stuff was? That's why, because it was filled out in here.
The trick to this is for every item in this list, we need to edit the values down here. Just one of those deals of how it works. I'll even just say it, it's a lot of work to build it. But you build it once, you just get to keep reusing it, and it's flexible, and it's pretty cool. Module settings. This we're going to talk about later on at the end. Remember I said there was this pile of LEGOs we're going to use to build it together? When you pick the module settings box, this is what it's showing you. This is your pile of LEGOs. All this stuff right in here.
So when we were in the previous dialog I said yeah, we pick one, we do this from inputs, outputs. This is the pile. So think of this as there's my big box of LEGOs. That's right here. In the class today we are going to add a new one into there. Our own special one place that we can use and build our PLC with. So it'll be a couple of steps that happen with that. OK? So this the bad boy is scry, right? How many people looked at that and said, that's just hieroglyphics? A bunch of numbers, things, stuff?
Trust me, I did. But it's really not so bad. First of all, do you kind of recognize what's going on in here? These values? This is AutoCAD Electrical's naming convention. H for horizontal, V for vertical. I determined that when I picked here. HP-- that's part of the PLC thing. One's apparent. D-- I don't know for sure what that means, but you know, WA-- which way the wires come in, which way they go out. Parents, all that kind of stuff. But it's even giving you the descriptions here.
So when you look at the category-- remember, I said we were dividing them into piles? That's the same thing, right? Different categories. Then on the description that shows up for them as well, and then finally you can create your own image bitmap for it. So if any of you have created custom blocks, it's really the same thing. We're just creating this pile of pieces to go together. OK. Let me go through here. Let's see. Just a pile of LEGOs. Said that a couple of times.
So you select the style, because for each different style, you can have a whole new set of these blocks to work with. You know, they look different, they act different. Once again, that's why you don't have to create one for each one of these styles. Whatever your company picks, just worry about that one. Don't worry about the rest. Until some day somebody says, hey, I want it to look like this. Good for you. Go do your own work. Pick style seven or eight, one that hasn't been used, and you go off and make it.
That's how I tell them. You might not be able to do that. Any time you click on the last row, it's going to add another new row in nd enable you to bring another piece in. You can even click from an existing module. So if you want to just reuse blocks that you have in a previous one, you can click on that and it'll add them into the list. We are going to create our own. So that's just what we're going to do. Copy an existing block, make some changes to it. I think I'm just going to pull one in that I've already created.
Not going to go through all that editing pieces, and show you that part of it. OK? Any questions before I go off and try to make this happen? Like magic. Hocus pocus, don't look behind the curtain kind of thing. Is that a check? I never know when somebody might jump out. No? Nothing? All right. Going to go back to here. And we are going to start by going to the next drawing. [COUGHING] Excuse me. Hold on. How was that? That better?
Brand new drawing. First thing I'm going to do is insert the standard PLC module. So the parametric bad boy. All right? Show you how this guy works. Back to schematic. I am going to grab and insert parametric PLC. Notice I'm still selecting the same part number. Same thing. I'm carrying this theme all the way through. I pick the number that I want, the style, that kind of thing, and pick OK. Look at how long that is. That's part of my plan, right? It just happens to fill out the whole piece in here.
I can tell it I want to insert all, or insert spacers and breaks. Now, I can see this does fit on my schematic. If this was one that was bigger-- remember, this one only had 16 I/O points in it, so it all fits. If it was one that was bigger I'd say yes, I want to put spacers and breaks in. So maybe I'd put in only the first 20 lines, break that, start the next 20. Next 20, and so on, until it's all inserted. We can even build those spacers and breaks into the module.
I want to also point out here, include unused extra connections. This is those terminals that I was telling you about, right? If you want a very clean image, you would say leave them all out. If you want to see every terminal that's on the PLC module, you'd want to make sure they're included in your symbolism. OK? So I am going to leave that blank, and just pick OK. It asked me for the module number. This is module number five. Pick OK.
Beginning address. We can choose whatever we want for the addresses. You can make up your own names. Notice how it's even asking me if you want to break that module now, insert it on the next rung. I'm going to continue it without a break. Give it my I/O starting address, and I have inserted the PLC module. Right now I have five PLC modules in my project. All five of them are the same part number. We've shown you three different ways of how they look so far. Right?
Because of the things that have happened. Three different ways, depending on how your company wants to work. This is the most common, but it's not the only one I've seen. Right? Depending on the size, that little guy inserted first-- 16 I/O? Boy, that one's pretty tempting to use that. Commonly that'd be on smaller machines. Might be more of a point to point wiring diagram. Might put that bad boy right in the middle of my drawing, and then just start building everything around it, because that really is the focal point of my small little machine.
You get the bigger things-- you know, this is going to be a lot of I/O points. There's only 16. You can imagine if there was 64. It could cover several pages. We're still OK. Electrical doesn't care. It's going to keep right on working with that. All right. So we can put that guy in. Now we're going to create a new one. Is everybody excited? Come on. Show me you're awake. OK. All right. I like that. Low rumbling. John? Come on, you gotta join in here. You did? OK.
It didn't look like it. Your eyelids were shut. So we are going to go to this tool. Built into AutoCAD Electrical, it is our PLC database file editor. Remember all those dialog boxes that I was showing you in the PowerPoint? Here they are. Right? So I want to create a new one based off of L16AWA. What do you think is going to be the easiest way of doing that? What was that? Really close. I'm going to copy and paste it, right? That's always the easiest.
So I'm just going to come up here-- copy that. It's still the same type, same everything, so I'm going to say paste it. Electrical says, hey, there's one already existing. Excellent. So give it a new name. Dash AU. I know, people call me Mr. Originality, right? For naming. You can groan. Groans are acceptable. They're as good as laughs to me, because it shows you're paying attention. Mr. Originality. Besides Uncle Randy. Those are the two that are-- there's others that are not politically correct, too.
All right, so now let's pick on this guy. Down here. AU. Right? That's the one I'm editing and working with. So we're going to jump down here and go to module specifications. Right? I've already created this one. We copied it. The first stuff up on top is all the same thing, right? Alan Bradley, still the same manufacturer, still the same categories, still micro logic. This is just my unique one that I want to make look different. So all of that stuff is already filled out.
If we have time at the end, and I'm pretty sure we will-- we run to 3:00 today-- we're going to create a brand new one from scratch to show you that it really-- you know, this is-- we're kind of easing into that. If I just said we're going to start from scratch and go-- everything and go up in here. But we're starting kind of slow here. So the first step is number of terminals, things going on with this one. Let's see. We have a block to insert. I'm going to do that first. Browse here.
Grab my dip switch box. Right, so I have a block that I'm putting into there. We are going to go to the module box dimensions. Type in 0.5 here, and color grid. LTYPE. Line type. Hidden. OK? That's for the top rung. Right? That's what it's saying right here for the top. For the bottom I'm going to need you to do the same thing. 0.5. Color. Green. LTYPE. Hidden. OK? Any questions so far? Right. I don't want to get too lost, go too fast.
Make sure you understand what we're doing. We're changing-- you saw how the PLC comes in, right? It was all black lines, all pieces on there. Now we're overwriting and saying the top line is going to be red and hidden, bottom line's going to be green and hidden. I just picked those so we could see them, right? That's the only reason. Probably wouldn't be what you want to do, but you never know. Maybe you need to do that because you're going to put a break at that line. You want to force something to happen.
All right, next we're going to pick OK here. Go to module prompts. So this one-- remember when I inserted it, it asked me for the module and I said five, right? That's where this prompt is coming from here. I'm going to start down here, and start putting in new prompts. I'm going to say this is AU5. Change. This is exactly where I get carried away. I'm busy typing all these things in, and I pick the next one before I put this in.
So basically, right here I'm just asking it-- I'm just giving it a prompt. I want it to say what line do you want for AU number five, number six. So whatever you wanted to place into here, you could. And finally, the last one is AU8. Change. The key here to remember is you have to pick one of those for the prompts, give it what you want it to prompt you as, then hit the Change button. If you don't hit Change and you just click the next one, you are now typing in the value for that very first-- you know, for that one, and the first one's lost, and all that kind of thing.
Experience is a wonderful thing. This is the little definition. It helps you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. OK? Right? Make sense? Here's two things I'll say-- number one, when it to AutoCAD Electrical, I'm the most experienced person you'll know. Keep that in mind with my definition. I have made all of these mistakes more often than you can imagine, like that one. Even though in a perfect example, preparing for the class, I'm going through the PowerPoint.
Yeah. Oh, yeah, I remember. I need to hit Change. I'm running through the exercise. What did I do? Forget to hit change. I was like, aw, right there. It just comes back and gets me again. So I'm the most experienced guy. So we have all of those available now as prompts. Right? So we have all of that information, and we are good to go here. Now I'm going to the terminal grid. When I pick on these different things, notice how the attributes along the bottom, down here, are changing.
Right? That's crucial. So if I pick number one, this is the parent. Right? So you can see the attribute values that are coming into there. As I slide down to number two, that is just a terminal point. It doesn't have any of that information. No manufacturer, no catalog, that kind of stuff. These are the default values you can put in for this PLC. So we're going to move down to PIN number five, and now you'll notice for this-- this is an I/O point.
It has five lines of description that you can pre-populate, and I'm going to put a value in here for the tag-- for the tag value. I'm actually in do a couple of things. For the description, I'm going to put in percent percent five. What does that mean? It's AU number five, right? Earlier I was putting in those prompts, and I picked on percent percent five, and I said AU number five. So now it's going to look back to those prompts-- whatever revaluate I type in there is going to show up in here.
Right? Think of them as variables that I can place in and-- Yes. It would have been, but then I would have had to tape it all in up here. I'm lazy. Not too lazy to remind you to put fives for your response when you review the class, but I'm too lazy to type that all in. Yes, it would have been great to type in I/O point number five, description line one, and then it would have prompted me for that, and I would have known the type it is. So absolutely.
I'm also going to come over here to tag A. Do you remember what tag A was from when we were looking at the PLC? It's the I/O address. Right? A stands for address, tag stands for tag. AutoCAD Electrical works off tag attributes all the time. So the tag value we can also determine here. I'm going to show you a little trick about what we can do with this. The attribute address is percent percent A. OK? So I could put that in, and it would just increment and do all its things because it knows whats going on.
But I'm going to cheat. I'm going to say this guy is tag plus one. Now I'm going to move on. I don't have to hit Change here, but I'm going to number six. Do the same thing here, percent percent six. This one is going to be percent percent A plus three. Why? Just because I wanted to show you what you can do with this. Depending on your PLC, you might need-- some manufacturers, they skip points, you know, just as they're jumping around. Gives you the power to be able to do that, as well.
That's why I'm just putting random numbers in. And not quite random, but you can see it doesn't follow-- I can force it to be what I want it to be. This is percent percent seven. Whoops. Didn't pick there. Number seven. And this one is going to be just the standard percent percent A. And lastly, we're going to grab eight. Eight. And this one is-- what did I put in? Percent. Percent percent A. Plus two. Just some values. So again, this is part of that work that you're going to have to do to create the PLC module.
Literally you really should go through each one of those and put in the values you want to see and show up for all 16 of them. 64 if you're creating one of those PLCs. I know it's a lot of effort. One time. That's the key thing to remember. It's like oh, yeah, this is really a pain in the butt. And I know you would use different words, but I'm going to go with butt here. Pain in the butt. But just think, there's only one. I only have to do it one time, and it's ready to go. OK?
So we have our new module, we made this bad boy customized. I'm going to save that. We have AU16 down here, and I'm going to hit Done and Insert. Actually-- yeah. So we're back into our dialog box. Pick that one, pick OK, and I'm going to insert it up here. Comes in and asks me the same stuff, right? It's the same PLC module. Insert all. Prompts, module number six. Randy was here 2017. Did I type something wrong? No? OK. I pick OK.
Beginning address, same kind of things in here. Just like we were doing earlier. Continue without a break. Output address. And OK. OK, so what all happened now with the changes I made? We look down here, here's my dip switch block that it placed in. Right? This is one where I make this a dynamic block, and now I can go in and flip those switches around back and forth. Didn't get to it. Let's look up at the top. Oh, a description line, 1, 2, 3, 4. Randy was here, 2017.
Remember, it prompted me? I typ them in, put the values in. Look at those I/O points. We started with the address plus one, so it's AOA1 plus 3. Just the address, all by itself. So it came in at 0. And then plus 2. We just made a custom PLC. We did magic on our own.
[APPLAUSE]
[LAUGHTER]
Take that! That was awesome. Thank you for that. That made AU right there. All right. So a couple of things I want to show you. Before we create a brand new PLC block-- we're going to come back to that. How many of you have seen a PLC I/O utility? Those that have done this before? One. John, you haven't-- oh, you've seen it. OK. How many were impressed? Two of you. What? It's a little confusing to use it, but it's really impressive. Come on, you gotta admit, the first time you fired it up and created drawings it was pretty impressive, right?
It's the same kind of problem they have with any automation tool, right? First of all, there is no magic pill. Anybody that tells you that everything just happens "automagically," and it's just easy, and you'll love it-- they're full of crap. Somewhere you have to put in a lot of effort to get that thing to happen. Same thing is going to have with this PLC. I'm going to dive in and show you this thing. What it is, for those that haven't seen it, we're going to go into a spreadsheet. Excel spreadsheet.
Enter a bunch of information, and we're going to "automagically" hit Create. OK? So that last part is pretty quick and easy, right? It's create. As long as all that stuff beforehand was good, you're going to have drawings spitting out left and right. Works really cool. It is a great demo tool. Always want to demo that bad boy, because everybody likes the idea of seeing drawing created in front of them. So if you're a demo guy, like I have been, click that button. Drawings go, people just go-- wow. That's pretty cool.
You never want to show them the fact-- you know, you're never going to start from scratch with that tool and show them all the work that happens, that goes into this. I'm going to start with that in here, and show you some of what's going on. Here's some the key things with this that I'll tell you as you look into this. First of all, it takes some work to get it set up. Not gonna lie to you, that's the way it works. Same thing with AutoCAD Electrical. I guaranteed you guys 20% if you use AutoCAD Electrical AutoCAD.
That first project you do-- not going to be 20% improvement. "Guaran-darn-tee" it. Also a better word I'd use for that, as well. It's just not going to happen. That first project is a killer. Because you have to create the custom blocks. You have to create your drawings. You have to learn to fill out that information. You have to do all that stuff. Literally if you're perusing along here, your productivity goes like this. And your boss is going to go, what the hell is going on? I just spent all this-- rah, rah, rah, rah, rah.
Until you get to the second, or the third project, and pretty soon he says hey, I need you to do this. And you go, OK. And you hand it in to him and he goes, how did you do do that? Because of all that work that I did beforehand, it gets there. And it can be, as I mentioned-- I confidently can say 20%. Confident. Sometimes it can just be something as simple as the automatic title block update tool. Here I am selling the software.
I'm not a sales guy, but just that tool alone-- how many times have you had to go through your whole project and change the title block? Opening up every drawing, editing the title block. Come on. You guys can raise your hands. I know you've all done it, all right? How long does that take? And even if it only takes 20 minutes, how boring is that job? How many times do you make a mistake just because you're tired of typing the same thing over and over again?
AutoCAD Electric, that's one job. People have bought the software just for that. Cause they can go to one spot, fill out the information, click Update, and it updates 20, 30, 100 drawings. Very cool. That's enough of the sales stuff. Of this tool. So that's what it's going to do, is automatically create drawings. We are going to go take a look at that spreadsheet. First of all, this is part of what it starts to look like. We have the module we're going to use. I didn't bother putting in the AW, A1, and all that kind of stuff.
Here's the other piece of advice I'll give you when you start working with this-- little tip from your Uncle Randy-- do not start with a scratch one. Don't just open up a new spreadsheet and think you're going to fill it all out and have it work. If you are a glutton for punishment-- I don't know if it's sadism or masochism. I always get those two confused, but it's one of those, and you shouldn't do it. Start with the one that they give you. AutoCAD Electrical comes with a default one that works. Run that.
Oh, look. All the drawings created. OK, delete those drawings. Dive into the spreadsheet. Make a change. Oh, look, it worked again. Good. And build up, and get to what you're going there. The key to that is I know what happens. If you start from scratch, you're going to go, oh, this software is a piece of crap. It never works. It doesn't work at all. It works. You just have to get it set right. Any automation relies on rules. You have to follow those rules. OK, so that's why I'm not changing all this.
But you'll notice in this column, where it says Address Number, I put in commands. Spacers. Breaks. So as I'm putting in that PLC-- remember, I said we could adjust it? I can say, well, I need a gap here because-- I know I'm going to put a separate branch in, so I want a spacer in. Or I know at some point that's too big, and I want to break it off onto the next drawing, so I'm going to put a break symbol on it. So we can do that, right? The spacer piece.
No other data has to be filled out in that row. I'm going to show you the spreadsheet here in a minute. In the Code column, we'll start the next module. Right? You skip one, going on to the next module. New drawing codes. All this stuff is available. I'm not going to read through every one of them, and get that all going. Remember, all of this is available for download. And here's one of those key points, right? Should be even a tip from your Uncle Randy.
There's two things in here that I think-- this one's important. You can put whole circuits in, instead of just one block. Right? Oh, now we can do really fancy things with it. Instead of just a block name, if I put an asterisk in it, I can put a circuit in. What that means to AutoCAD Electrical is that it will explode at once. Now, normally my rule is never explode blocks. Circuits I don't count as blocks, because they're made up of other blocks that create the wiring, the symbols, that kind of thing.
So exploding them just turns it back into blocks. That's the plan with that. OK? All kinds of things going on with that. Wire jumper codes. These are always pretty tricky, as well. What happens is as we're putting these PLCs in, you'll have these jumpers, right? Like, you might have a branch that runs off into here. So what we enter is this code stuff that's showing up over here, to tell it where the wires are going to run to. Right? So as it puts that branch in.
Right now I know this is all kind of like-- hieroglyphics stuff going on. We're going to create a drawing, and then look at the spreadsheet and compare it to what was created. You'll see this, as well. Key thing with this is W means keep, or wire. X means remove. So if we look at some of these examples here, all four W's mean on the first wire it's going to have a wire, and a wire, right? These two. The line below it, wire and wire. This one, we remove the piece of wire, add the piece of wire.
Add, remove, right? XW goes from left to right, top down. OK? That's going to happen there. Same thing with this one. Add, remove. Remove, add. Add, remove. Add, remove. Right? You can make them any combination you want. Just wanted to give you some examples of how it works on there. OK, and we can put codes in the PLC columns to fill out values. Let's take a look at this bad boy. OK, so let's see. First of all, I'm going to go back to my drawings. Whoops. Clicked on the wrong one.
We're going to go to drawing number three. For you newbies, you notice how easy it is to get to a different drawing in a project? Right? AutoCAD Electrical has tools for just about everything. I don't have to go browse to the next project in the drawing. I don't have to go out to the file thing, and try to find it and open it. I just say hey, I'm going to open the next drawing on my project, and electrical goes from two to three. I want to go to the previous one. Goes from three to two. OK? All right.
Let's see. Let's open that spreadsheet. Here's an example. We could have had that guy running as well. And where are you? Right there. I was concerned about getting fired up before the class, and then forgot half of the stuff. OK, so here's that spreadsheet we were talking about, right? You saw I took the screen captures right out of this bad boy. Here's the module number. Rack, slot. I have some codes in here, so we can see some of these. Installation, location, that kind of thing.
Here's the spacers. Here's the description, the information about the PLC module. So basically, this starts with the PLC module here, and then every row in here represents one rung on your schematic. Now, that could correspond to one I/O point on the PLC, but it doesn't have to. If I put spacers in here, that's not an input on the PLC. I just said there's some other information going in there, but it's not attaching to the PLC. This tool requires a PLC.
Requires a PLC-- we gotta make sure everything was working again-- to drive it. So last year, Tiffany and somebody taught a class about how you could fake it out. Basically you put in something that represents a PLC, but it's not really a PLC. So the tool thinks there's a PLC, but there's really not a PLC, so it all works, and you can make anything you want out of this. Did you get all that? But basically, the rule still is it has to have a PLC in there to drive it.
So if you have some questions about that, I have documents about it. You can look at their class last year, but it's all the same kind of thing. You put a pretend PLC in this first area, and all this kind of stuff. Then we get over here, and each one of these kind of areas that they have separated in this spreadsheet represents a device that's going into or in front of the PLC. Or the back of the PLC, depending if it's an input or an output row. Right?
By telling it there's other things in here, you tell it whether it's input or output, all that kind of stuff that's happening in here. This is the information that happens on that component. I'm going to come back to this and show you it in a little bit. All right? So this is device number one, two, three, and so on. Here's the spreadsheet. Magical, looks like hieroglyphics. I totally understand. I know the only reason I can look at this and know what's going on is I have done this many times.
I know what all this stuff is doing because I have fought with it, just like you're going to, to get there. And I didn't have the advantage of me to tell me what was going on and happening. I just kind of had to start doing just exactly what I told you to do. I started, made one, changed a line. Hm-- what happened? Looked at the stuff. OK, I'm going to try this. Change the line. You know, one at a time, and kept fighting through. OK, now I want this to happen. And you know, kept building up the same way.
You guys get a jump start, so you're way ahead of me. That experience thing comes back, right? Why am I experienced? Because I made all the mistakes you're going to make many, many times. OK? So that's what's driving it. That's the information in there that's happening. So let's go back to AutoCAD Electrical. Here's a real spot. You're going to get a chance to go ooh and ah. PLC I/O utility. I'm going to select my custom PLC file. Click Open.
I am going to select the settings for that PLC file. I am not going to get into what all those are, but it basically says, where did the starts go? If it's on an input, do I start this far over? The dimensions over to here, all that kind of thing? It's reasonably self-explanatory. If I have that one selected and I pick set up, you can look in here as the distance between ladders, spacing between I/O points. That kind of thing. When you start playing around with this, this is one of the spots to check.
Create your own WDI file. Start making some changes and see how it affects them, and gets what you're looking for. Right? Do all that. Free run. Pick start. Oh, look at that. You can see why this is a demo thing, right? It put the ladder in, it's putting my PLC in. It's putting all those rungs, and pieces, and stuff into there. Oh, look, it's even going down the second one. Hands free, right? Ooh. Oh, starting number three. Notice that? It started another drawing, even. Made more sheets going with stuff in there.
Huh? Is this-- if you were sitting in front of your boss, or your [INAUDIBLE], wouldn't this be magical? Right? Oh, look what I can all do here. And drawing number three. That is the truth of it. Here's the thing that happens, that I see happen all the time. People go, oh, if I put all this stuff in it, I'm so much faster. I'll lose my job. Yeah. [LAUGHTER] I have never, ever heard that happening, because just what you said. Hey, look at you. You're done in three days instead of five. You can start on on this project now.
That is correct, right? So it just never happens-- and there it is, right? Three complete drawings, PLC stuff, and I was off getting a drink of water and doing my stuff. You saw inputs we started out with, we have outputs here, and an input and output module , all driven off of that spreadsheet piece. OK? This is the discrete stuff, yeah. Discrete inputs, discrete outputs. I think that was the module that was in there. All right, let's-- I forgot to select the button that said add them into the project, so it didn't add that in.
I'm going to-- this guy, back to number three. I'm going to-- back to the original one, and we're going to take a look at this very first line, and look at our spreadsheet. Let me slide him up to there. Bring my spreadsheet back up. Notice how I had this all set up already so it looks pretty good. Right? Little smaller size, and all that. Gotta myself a little pat on the back for that. OK, so let's take a look at what's happening, right? Hieroglyphic stuff going on on here.
In fact, I'll just-- wow. OK. So let's look. Here is our information. All of that information's up over there, right? Slot one, slot two. We gave it installation codes. You can see those right above. I can zoom out later on and do that. Spacers. All of this description information is all showing up over in here for the PLC module itself. Right? That's all going up to right here. All of this stuff. Then-- now the really cool stuff happens. We start here.
The default spreadsheet that comes with it has these lines in here to help designate it, so you can see what it's really doing. That is input or device number one. It only has four columns. You can add more. You can put different columns in for the different attributes in if you want to. Again, experiment, right? It has these four. Oh, but I want to have description two. OK. Put D2, description one. You know, try to play around with that stuff, and get some examples. You can fill it out. But take a look.
Position number one, right here. This is a terminal block. It says JBOX1, TB1. Oh, look, table one, TB1. That's the block name. That's that terminal. And location, JBOX1. Ooh. OK? Position number two. Yes, you can add more attributes. Now, I think there is a limit. Some of them don't go. You have to use coding, and stuff. Yeah. Yep. Yep. You can put those in here. Now I want to point out, each one of these is a device, I've said, right? Whoops.
I almost could have done one of those rolly things again. But you'll notice we have some blanks. What's happening is in this spreadsheet, I can put up to nine devices in front of or behind a PLC. Up to nine. So as we're going across, this is position one. In those settings thing, I said every 3/4 of an inch there's another device. Right? Well, there's another something. So here's device 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. They're blank, right? There's some blanks in there, skipped around.
So if we take a look, here's one, two-- well, there's the push button, cycle start. You see all the information? Terminal, and then this piece. And then we have a blank. This guy up here was just an experiment, but if we look at this, this rung, right in there where the spacer is-- there isn't anything. And I was fooling around with something. I don't know why this didn't come in here. But there's nothing here. There's nothing right there. Right?
If I look at the next one over, if I slide over my PLC module, we can look at this next one. Blank. Nothing there. Right? So next one-- then I get to number seven. Oh, look, we got another terminal going on. This one's CAD five, kind of information in there. Right, so everything that's happening in that PLC sheet is driving that. Driving the creation. Is it easy to create this? No. But it works "automagically," right? Once it was there, I just clicked a button.
Hey, I've got three complete drawings in seconds, while I was off getting a new bottle of water. OK? Ooh. Ah. Huh? As many times as this has sold the software, I will be the first to tell you that about 5% of those people actually use the tool. Because getting it set up to that point takes a lot of effort. It has to fit into certain parameters. Having an engineer that likes to work in spreadsheets. OK? He can give you spreadsheet information. You can, you know, fiddle in it to here, and get it to work right.
This is not an editing tool. I want to caution with that, as well. This is not a tool that says OK, I've created my drawings, and now I'm going to go back, change the values, and it'll update my drawings. Nope. Doesn't work that way. This is a drawing creation tool. If you need to edit your drawings, fix the spreadsheet, erase your drawings, and make them again. Why? Because it's easy. So you don't really need to go back and edit them. It's not what the tool does. OK? Questions? Gotta be questions. Yes?
Man-- I so wish you could do that. I have actually started-- did some investigation on doing that. Taking existing sheets, reading them into a spreadsheet-- basically fill this information out, edit it, and then create a new project from it. Right? Because again, it's a drawing creation tool. Autodesk does not have one. There's not one available to do that. We have spreadsheet editing tools. Yeah, probably not in this class. I only have 13 minutes left? Oh, man.
That took a little longer than I thought. I won't have time to show that. That is a great question. I don't know the answer to that. It's just different kinds of workflows. My thought here, as I've worked and talks with customers, is really getting back about that scenario I said, that engineers are used to the spreadsheet stuff. So if it's just copy and paste-- let's say you're the drafter-- you have to make all the changes.
He has to read mark something where this might be a case where you could get him to do the work in a spreadsheet, and you could auto create your drawings. OK? Yeah, go ahead. Yes. Yes. Can you do that? Yes. Yep. Yes.
So again, look at that class last year that I mentioned. I don't remember the name of it. And if that doesn't give you your answers, I have some papers and things on it as well. It's all about kind of baking out what it's doing. And I'm all for that, right? When I'm working with software and teaching people classes, I tell you what the rules are, and then I teach you what you can really do.
As long as you follow the rules. It's like being a teenager, growing up, right? Dad says you gotta be in by 11. Well, what does 11 mean? Does it mean 11, or 1101? Or 1102? As long as I'm following the rules, right, I get away with all this kind of-- and that's the same thing with electrical. As long as you have tag values on-- you know, manufacturer codes. You have those attributes right, the rest of it, electrical doesn't-- you know, like I mentioned, with this, it has to have a PLC module. Does the PLC module have to show up in the drawing?
No, that isn't a rule. What is a rule is it has to show up in this spreadsheet that there's a PLC module. OK, so we can put a fake PLC module in, and the whole program is happy to work. That kind of thing. OK. 13 minutes left. I took a little longer than I wanted.
I have a bonus section in the documentation. How many people downloaded all the files for the class? Beforehand? OK. I will be updating them, or I updated them last night, so you might want to take a look at the new ones. If you haven't, go and get those. Is that me? No, that's somewhere-- I'm not done yet. But that was pretty cool. I have a few more slides to show you. But download that sheet. You have all the exercises in there.
And in the next section I take you through, step by step, how to create a brand new PLC module. So earlier we created one by copying it. OK, that's good, but-- OK. Yeah. I'm going-- OK. So download that, and it has all the documentation. And a lot more of the description stuff, too. It's not just the exercise. There's 14 or 15 pages' worth of me talking about same stuff you just heard me doing an hour and a half here.
Data sets there, so you can do all the same stuff I did in here. Even some more, because I missed a step or two here or there. OK, so make sure you do that. Download the files. OK, that's enough out of you. So many times I can do this.
All right. Next-- let's see. Take a look. Thank you for attending. So there's my stuff. Remember, again, there's not many people in the class. I need 15 people in order to get my ratings. OK? So I'd really appreciate it if everybody would do it. It's all on your app, and it's easy, right? Every question, answer awesome or five.
Five is really good, OK? Not zero. Five is the best answer. And my name and my class is Randy Brunette. It's the AutoCAD Electrical PLC thing. If you want any of my business cards and stuff, I have some up here. Thank you again for attending. I really appreciate it.
[APPLAUSE]
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