The ABCs of Transitioning to AutoCAD Electrical and Best Practices

TODD SCHMOOCK: Hello, everyone. My name is Todd Schmoock. And I'm going to be delivering the ABCs of Transitioning to AutoCAD Electrical and Best Practices. I work for applied software. And I am a technical expert on the AutoCAD Electrical software.

So you may be using AutoCAD Electrical currently for your AutoCAD Electrical designs. And if you are, your transition will be much easier. If you're not using AutoCAD Electrical, just learning a few extra tools or things that you need to know, like blocks, and how to create lines, and that type of thing will actually make your transition much easier. So the few things that we're going to be going over are going to be, why is AutoCAD Electrical a better choice?

Because when you do move to AutoCAD Electrical, you're going to save a lot of time over regular AutoCAD. Even if you don't implement all of the functionality, you can still save time. The other area that we'll look at is how AutoCAD Electrical still uses AutoCAD blocks, and with that, the attributes that are inside of them. How you can update attributed title blocks with the properties from Electrical and push that information into those title blocks.

And you'll also look at how to create accurate reports and similar to ones that you probably already are creating, probably externally. But you'll be able to create them right from the software. So why AutoCAD Electrical? So AutoCAD Electrical is a better choice from a standpoint of how it's going to add intelligence versus the non-intelligent data that you have in AutoCAD. So AutoCAD is just dumb text, and dumb lines, and various things. But in AutoCAD Electrical, you have smart blocks, smart text, you have smart lines, lines are actually wires, or you can make them wires.

I called it ABC because you're still using AutoCAD, it's still using standard blocks with the attributes, and you're still using the AutoCAD commands. But there are purposely built tools that you could use in AutoCAD electrical. And best practice would be to use those tools. But you don't really have to. So as you see in this image on this slide, you'll still be using the Home tab. And you'll be using it for the lines, the layers. But there are also tools that have been added.

And as I mentioned, they're specialty built. So if you're working in a project, because AutoCAD Electrical groups all the drawings into a-- what's called a project. So they're connected together. So if there's any interoperability like lines going, which are wires, going from one drawing to another, there's a source and destination that's actually connecting them.

So in the end, you're still using the AutoCAD commands and linking them all together using lines, which as I mentioned, are just wires, or intelligent wires in AutoCAD Electrical. And these specialty-built tools actually keep that connectivity. But if you were to make-- use regular AutoCAD, then there's really no big deal because there's also specialty-built tools that will also update. Because what's going to happen in the end, you're probably going to use some tools that maybe technically, you shouldn't use. But we're all used to AutoCAD.

So if you use a regular move command, or delete, there are tools in there that can actually help you update it. So in AutoCAD Electrical, the intelligence really, besides all the smart lines that are wires, and the blocks, it-- having that project is really what's making the big difference with this. Because the project groups them, as I mentioned.

And as you can see in the image below, it actually groups them together. And this particular project, or that image, has nine drawings in it. But it doesn't matter. There could be a thousand because there's--

As far as I know, there was no limit to this. I've actually worked in a project that has over 900 drawings. So they list them, you can organize them in folders, and group them together. You'll see an add image too that there's to the right of the name of the drawing, you can see that there are codes in there that tell you whether it's a schematic, a control, a panel drawing. So I like using three-letter characters if I can help it, and then maybe expanding more when I have to.

The image to the right actually shows the-- one of the update tools. There are many update tools in here. So this one actually is a project wide. And if you look in the image, you'll see that there are check marks in the three check boxes to the left. And it says component tag, cross reference, and wire number. So they will update that functionality to make sure that it's accurate.

And if we go look at AutoCAD Electrical, and you can see that in this area here, we have the lines, the Home tab that gives you the lines, we also have the project manager down here in the bottom that has its own set of tools. There is the active project. So one of the things you want to make sure is that you understand that the active project is always the one at the top.

And all the other ones are-- I like looking at it like they're on deck, like they're available for editing. I'm still working on them, but I'm not done, but I'm currently working on this particular project here at the top.

So that's how you want to look at it. But the tools that come in from a project manager are like, open a project that's already existing, create a new one, and create a new drawing. And then, how you want to look at these tabs are if you're in a project and you want to do some kind of project functionality, you would end up using the Project tab. If you're in a schematic drawing, you would use a schematic.

So if I were to either double click or right click on this drawing, you would actually have tools that would allow you to open it, rename, copy, replace, and then there's also some properties that are in here too.

So you don't even need to use a Windows Explorer. You could do everything inside of the AutoCAD Electrical. So if I were to open this drawing, and I'm on a schematic drawing, so most likely, I'd want to be working inside of the schematic ribbon. If I was on a panel drawing, I'd go to a panel, and so on.

There's also conversion tools. So if you're working with regular AutoCAD geometry, and you've transitioned into AutoCAD Electrical, and you want to start using that same drawing that you already have, you could use these conversion tools to actually turn them into a smart drawing. So this drawing that you see right here, I have a ladder functionality. You don't need to use ladders. You could just have wires on a drawing with wire numbers.

But this tool would actually convert an-- a standard AutoCAD with standard text and lines would actually convert it to a ladder. And there's a bunch of other ones that would be in there that you could convert those dumb text to smart wire numbers. So that's what why you would be specifically picking a ribbon that you're actually working in. So it makes-- even that makes the transition a lot easier because just working in regular AutoCAD, you're kind of like, where's the tool at? So you don't have to really think about that.

And it's broken down into components. So if I wanted to Insert, so I'm working on this circuit right here, and maybe I wanted to Insert this component, there's icon menus that could be used. Now, there are components that are shipped based off of the standard, industry standard.

So the industry standard, like NFPA, IEEE, the European standards, they all come with it. So you would pick one that matches your company. And the best practice would be to use those standards, and then just add the ones that you want. So down here, you can see that I have the one for the company that I work with, and that's at Applied. And I've created my own menu for that.

Another good practice would be not to mix your custom ones in with the out of the box. Now, by using a standard, you don't need to make a bunch of symbols and footprints. So by using the standard, and using the library that comes with that, you would only use, or create, the symbols and footprints that you would need.

And that reduces the amount of time and effort to create them. Now, when I right click on something, the right click menu changes and updates to what I right click on. So in this case, I right clicked on a component.

So I get to move it, align it, delete it. And these are the specialty-built tools. Could I use regular AutoCAD delete? Yes, but it would be better to use this delete. There's a scoot tool so I can scoot this over. There's also a copy tool so I could say, hey, I just need another copy of this. And I'd like to put it over here.

And watch how the numbers update and adjust. So if you look at that, it actually added another wire in there, which gave it another wire number. And it automatically updates. So now, it's going to come in as B. And I'll show you in a little bit why that is. Now, I have turned on the IEC mode.

So in this IEC mode, I have the installation location and tag actually make up the component. So that's what's going to make it unique. You may or may not be using location codes. But if you are, you know what I'm talking about. And in your-- if you're using it in AutoCAD, that's just dumb text. So in this, it's smart. So where is this component located at?

We have descriptions, we have catalog information. So there's a lot of information that's in here. So now, I have this push button off here to the right. And if I end up editing this and changing this location code to a different location, you'll see that it didn't update right away. But that's why it's important that we use the update tools. And it's a good thing that they don't update right away because maybe you're not ready. You might want to do them, the updates, when you're ready to do it.

I can either do a local update, meaning just on one component. And it automatically updates it. Notice that it knew that it was in a different cabinet. So it just made it PB403. It took away the B. But because I have the location code tied into the tag, it changed. So now, it made it its own symbol. Or and its own tag with the same name.

Now, where this would come-- the IEC would come in handy, would be if you had multiple cabinets that had the same components inside of them. So you don't need to turn that on. I happen to turn it on just so you could see what would happen here. So that would be one. Then, there's other options here where I could rename it. I could also look at the details of that drawing.

So down here in the bottom of the details, I could also turn it to look at the thumbnail. So without even opening it up, I can just look at that drawing to see what it is. But I got these other codes that are sitting in here too. Well, those codes came from properties. So I have drawing properties, I got unique descriptions that go with it, I have its own sheet number, drawing number. And here are those codes that I could add in.

There are other items in here, like why did that push button update with the PB403? Because I told it I wanted it in line reference, which is based off the ladder. And then why did it go A, B? So you can go deeper and say the first one, I don't want anything. The second one, I want an A in there. And these are all customizable. You could change that.

We can change how we want the wire. I happen to have the wire number set up the same way with line referencing. Cross referencing, this destination symbol that you see here is tied to a source that's coming from sheet three. And what the line number is, and what wire number it is. So wire number nine is coming from there.

And then how do you want it to display? So these codes come in here. How do you want the styles to look? Why do the arrows look like that? And then, your ladders if you choose to use them. Like I said, you don't have to. So you got that set up. But then the project also has properties. And the project is more concerned with, where are the symbols coming from?

And that icon menu that I started, where is the icon menu? What is it using? NFBA in my case. And then, there's other things that we could adjust. And there are a few extra items that are in here. This is where the IEC mode was turned on where I wouldn't get that in a drawing. It's a project-wide functionality. But generally, these settings are the same.

Best practice would be to keep those settings exactly the same in both the drawing, match them up. But if you're drawing does need to change, so if I were to go into the drawing and I want to look at the component and have it do a PLC, because there's intelligent PLC information in here, I could have it do the PLC addressing.

So that's just one of many things that I could change. Or maybe even one drawing, one circuit, have a different sequential versus line reference. So that gives you a nice little overview. Back to the layers, the layers are still being used. So that-- everything you may have learned, or if you don't know layers, I guess the good news is if you-- whether you know layers or you don't, if-- best practice would be to use it as it is out of the box. You don't have to. Everything in Electrical is customizable. You don't have to. You can make it be what you want.

But to make your life easier, just use it out of the box as much as possible. And in this case, the only layers that have been created are for the unique wiring. But you don't even need to do that. So that's just a little quick overview of, why would I go to AutoCAD Electrical?

So having that AutoCAD Electrical intelligence and keeping the information up to date is going to be important for the accuracy that you end up doing. So now, what about the blocks and the attributes? So in the end, AutoCAD Electrical uses smart blocks. So I call them smart blocks because they're really just regular AutoCAD blocks. But the naming of the attribute actually makes them smart, because that's what's tied into the program. And it's looking for those particular attributes.

There is a naming convention with the schematic symbols. The footprints do not need naming conventions. If you look at that image to the left, you see that it's a typical AutoCAD block that's filled in with information. I can use the same block over and over again because Electrical is looking for that unique tag name that I mentioned earlier. And that particular one is named HPB11, PB for push button. So that's where the codes come in.

The image to the right is an exploded version of that. So you can see the attributes that are in there. Now, one of the techniques that you could use, as I mentioned earlier, you wanted-- best practice would be to use the standard, or one of the standards, that come out of it. So you don't have to make all these blocks. Now, if you got unique industry standard symbols that you're using that don't match a particular standard, and most of us have a handful of those, what I like doing is taking a block that's right out of the system, copying it out, and then exploding it, and then using W block to make my new one.

So tweak it, make my W block to explode it. Or explode it and use the W block on it. So one example that I use, because this happens to me quite often, are fuses where maybe I got the one that I can use out of the box, it's the industry standard, but then my company has special fuses that I need to make. So I need to make additional four of them. Or even this push button, I need to make a key push button. So just keep in mind that to save time, you may want to use the ones out of the box.

With a foot print, the 1-to-1 foot print, you don't have naming conventions. And you don't even really need to use attributes. The only reason you would use Electrical attributes in a footprint is because you want to make sure that they fall, the data falls, where you want it to fall. So what's nice about this is you can use your current library.

You don't even need to use the library that comes from out of the box. Even though best practice would be for you to use them to save time, you could use your existing library, your existing drawings, and you could link them to your symbol.

And then Electrical will add the attributes that it needs to make it, intelligent. So you don't need to worry about making those changes. With that, with a-- whether it's a footprint, or a schematic, there's actually a database, a sample database, that comes with AutoCAD Electrical. And that's saying-- you want to look at it as a sample database. It has a lot of part numbers and catalog numbers in it. But there's no way that all the catalog numbers could be added.

So you want to look at it as a sample, and that you could tweak, and add to, or remove from. So you want to look at how your part numbers are now and verify whether you have the same ones in the database.

Now most of the time, you probably will. So you'll keep the ones you have, delete the ones you don't need. But you could also start with a plain database, a blank database, extract information from your ERP, MRP, and then you could end up just copying and pasting actually information into that. Now that database is tied into where you have a PB, as an example, for push button that I mentioned before. CR for relays, and LT for light, and so on. So that's how that would end up working.

So let's take a look at-- from this AutoCAD Electrical standpoint. So here we have our blocks. When-- if I want to make a copy of this, one option would be to come in and just use this command. Now, watch this tool when I use the-- specifically built tool, it will also have updates baked into it. So it will update that to the correct line reference. So notice the drawing didn't update yet, but once I hit OK, it will.

It knows that it's on a different line reference. So it updated to PB401. Now if I wanted to go into that database and change that number, I could easily come in here and change that. Because when you use the copy command, it's going to copy everything over. Now, why would I want to go in there? Well, maybe I need a different push button.

And by the way, if I ended up using that, I would end up with three of those push buttons at the very least when I run my bill of material. Because I've copied the first one, now I'm copying another one.

So now, I could come in and add an asterisk. And I could pick from any one of these symbols that are in here. Notice it went from, what, about six of them because I was zeroing in on a particular column, and style, and what I wanted out of the database, to a wild card. So that's in the search criteria. You could add the vendor that you want, the wild card, whatever you need to do. And I went to 42,000 of them.

So as you can see, and there's more in there of different symbols, and from the different categories. But as far as push buttons, I got 42,000 of them that matched that particular block. So there's actually more part numbers in here that match other block styles per standard. And I can just come in and pick the one that I want.

So here's your Eaton-- so I could just pick-- I'm just randomly picking one, if you're wondering. So I can come in and go like that. It knows that there was pins already assigned to it. So in here, I had pins. Do you need new pins? Do you want to keep them the same? I'll keep them the same. And then I'll go, OK, on that. So now it updated. Which ties into why it's very important that, if you can, use the purposely built ones. But if you didn't, we know that we have that update tool at the very least.

And over here, I have the project-wide update that I could run. And there are a lot more updates that I could run with that. Now, this might be an example of where I could end up using regular AutoCAD commands and I could explode this. What if I wanted to make a block that was similar to this, but it needed to look a little different per my industry standard? So I started off with another one. And then I come in and I rearrange, or change, keep them the same. Doesn't really matter how I would do that.

So and then I would just W block it out. But if you wanted to use the tool that comes with the system, you could end up using the symbol builder. And in that image, it's actually a pretty good image because you could start with just regular geometry.

And there's a palette that would come up, a regular-looking AutoCAD palette, that allows you to drag and drop these attributes. After you make about two or three of these, and if you know AutoCAD, you'll probably be like me and you'll probably just migrate over to regular AutoCAD commands.

I just find them a little bit easier, quicker. So I mean, if you got 30 symbols you got to create overall, you're not going to create them all at the same time. You're going to create them as you come across them. Maybe it takes you 15 minutes by using your AutoCAD talents than you have. And if you don't, that's why you got these tools. You would just-- don't worry about learning the AutoCAD tools. Just go ahead and learn the AutoCAD Electrical tools. So that's why you would end up doing that.

Now, from a panel standpoint, we have this panel drawing in our project. And this one already has some of the footprints put in. And these are-- these footprints that you see here actually started off with no attribute data in them at all. So if I just double click on this and I go open on this, you can see that it would automatically go into the block editor. And there's no attributes in there. There's a user attribute in here. But that's about it.

And I could use tools to extract that information from the schematic, and actually insert that in, which is why best practice uses much out of the box. But if you make your own, there are handy tools that allow you to make the connection between the schematic symbols part number and the footprint that you want to use.

So if I were to just right click on here and I ended up using a tool, notice it knows that I'm in a footprint, or I should say a panel. So it wants to edit the footprint. So I could go use a surfer. And now, the surfer dialog box comes up and says, hey. Where-- I want to go-- do you want to look at the name plate? So the p here is the parent. So it's the parent is always the schematic. And I have the panel ones, which is the hashtag. I got a name plate and I got the one to one.

So I might want to just go to that. I could edit it, I could open it up. So now, I'm right here at whatever symbol that I said go to, that I could edit, delete-- got some other tools that are sitting in there. So it knows what's connected. And that's the beauty of the different ones that you would end up using. I'll close this down for now. So from a block standpoint, if you already know AutoCAD, no big deal. You're able to work with it and use your AutoCAD commands.

If you don't, you can just use the symbol builder with it. So now, back to looking at the next step of this, what about updating title blocks? So the real key here is you got to have an attributed title block. And the attributed title block really is the key. But I don't really care that it's specially built for the AutoCAD Electrical. So in other words, just use your regular AutoCAD one. And just tie those attributes that are in your title block to the properties that are with the AutoCAD Electrical.

So I already showed you the ones, the images that you're seeing. The image to the left is the drawing property. That's where the unique tag, or the description, was in there. I didn't show you this one yet. But when I go back to it, I'll show it to you where I can put unique descriptions in with the title of the project, or that basically go across the entire drawing set is typically how that would end up working.

So by using this tool, you are saving quite a bit of time because think about how you're doing it right now. Right now, you're probably coming in and adding one draw-- or editing one drawing at a time, you open it up, you double click on the title block, and then you edit that attribute, or multiple attributes in there.

So that would take a lot of time, where in AutoCAD Electrical, I would end up filling in my electrical properties for the drawing, for the project, and then I would push that information to my title blocks, whether it be the current drawing, or the active drawing, or any combination of project drawings that are in there.

So just activating this particular functionality is really easy to do the math because if you got-- like right now, I only have nine drawings in there. But think about when I had the tens and the hundreds that I've mentioned. If it takes you even just 15 minutes to open that file up and edit something, multiply that by the amount of drawings that you have, put them into a project, link your attributes together, and push that information to all the drawings. It'll save hours, actually.

In that case, it was-- it would have been a huge task for me to make a change because I had a drawing that had-- or a drawing set that had over 200 drawings in them. And we realized we had the title wrong in it. So we had to go in and make edits. But we were using AutoCAD Electrical. We just pushed it right in. So it makes things a lot easier on there.

So when you do make all the database, you got your drawings in there, you make the properties, the tool will look like this where I could go in and select what I want. And I can save these selections. The upper portion of this dialog box is all about the project, but I could send it to just project, global project, but could make it drawing specific if I wanted to, maybe like revisions. And even a sign off right there could be global, or it could be unique to the drawing.

But the bottom section is all about the drawing. So that's what you're actually going to see. Now, the end result would end up looking like that. So best practice, think about the project descriptions as being global to all of the drawings. That's that upper portion. And all of the unique drawing properties are unique to the drawing. So that's how you would want to look at it.

So if I come in and make-- and look at the change here, or look at how I could make the change, or addition to the title block, right now, I have this title block sitting right here. And if I were to double click, like the classic way that we would do it in regular AutoCAD. So in regular AutoCAD, we're double clicking on it.

We're adding the information here. And I could still do this. So you could do a combination of the classic way if you happen to have it open or you can push it all. You're really not tied to any particular way to do it.

But I already mentioned that we-- now, this is the active drawing. So I can just click this tool right here. And I already mentioned that I got a schematic. So if I come in here and say, OK, that is the name that I want on here. It's a control schematic. And then come into my descriptions of my [AUDIO OUT]-- this nice little handy description tool right here. That allows me to add information in. And I have my information filled in. Now, these lines here, I stopped at eight. I renamed them.

I can name them anything that I want. I could say, project name, project description. I could do whatever I want with that. I could use any one of these lines that are available in this page. But these lines are infinite. So I can just keep going. And I've gone to about three panels over the course of my use of AutoCAD Electrical.

So some of those larger projects get a little bit involved. And but typically, you're probably the typical user is going to be using one panel. I always say, try to make it simple if you can. But if you need them, go ahead and use them. You'll also see that I have a check mark over here in Reports. So when I get to making reports in AutoCAD Electrical, I could actually say, I want these in. When I say, hey, give me all the project description, it'll actually include any one of these that I have checked, or every one that I have checked.

So they are the pieces. We got the drawing property. So another way to go. By the way, I don't even need to be in an open drawing. I could right click on any of these drawings and go to the properties and modify them. Add to, change, whatever I need to do. So that's even a handy little tidbit of information to know, right?

In AutoCAD, you'd have to open up every one of the drawings and make the change. You don't need to do that here. There's also a tool that will allow you to export it to a spreadsheet, which is located under the import and export. You would export it to a spreadsheet, whether it be this or any of these other components. You make the changes and import them back in. Talk about a huge time saver, right?

So now, you're just maximized your time. So keeping things smart, exporting this information, tweak it in Excel, bring it back in, update your title block. You're easily well over 25% over a regular AutoCAD. Many companies have made even more than that. They've been over the 50% over regular AutoCAD.

So now, I have this nice purposely built tool that allows me to push this information into the AutoCAD electrical title blocks. Now, there's a mapping file that goes behind here. It just simply says, here's the attribute that is in the title block. And here's the property I want you to go to. So it's literally that simple. And you can just say, select all, one option if you're-- I always jokingly say if you're lazy. Because if you don't have it mapped, or you want the information there and it's not mapped, it's not going to hurt anything.

Or you could just say, clear all, and you go-- specifically pick the ones that you want. So however you want to do it. And then down here, I happen to know, I'm going to put it just on this active drawing. So I happen to know I only have one description. But I can pick them all. And I do want the drawing number, I do want the sheet number, and I want the sheet max. So I want all that to fill in.

So if I like my selection and I use this on a-- every single time, I could actually save that selection now. And then every time I do this, it's always going to have them selected. And then I could unselect what I don't want. Now, I did that in that one that was a little bit more complicated where I had a lot of line references being used. I could hit, Active Drawing, and it's going to push that in here. But just to show you the project-wide functionality,

We'll call this the classic AutoCAD Electrical project-wide drawing processor. So here's where you see the folders that I have made over here. And you don't need to use folders. But if you do, it helps you organize it back to if you have a lot of drawings. That can really come in handy. Here's the section, and subsection, and the drawing list. So you have a lot of choices. You could hold the Control key down and process more than one. You could Do All. So you got the Do All. You could reset it.

You could go to your folders and say, hey, I'm going to process all of the schematics. Or maybe in our case, we go, I have a lot more drawings in here than these nine. I want all the schematics and all the controls that go with it. So process just those. In our case, which we know we only have one in this drawing set. But whether I picked it individually or use this project functionality. And that's where the large drawing set comes in very handy if you're going to do that.

So now, you simply go, OK, and it adds the information in. So let's say you realize you made a mistake. The information here is wrong. So how would you fix it? You put it across every single drawing or a lot of the drawings that were in there. So you just come in and make those changes. So I'll come into my description and I'll just add a dash 1 maybe. And then I might go into my properties. Same thing. Just so I can show you that there's a change in here.

And then I could come back in and run that tool again, the project-wide update for the title block, or individual. And I can say, that one changed. I could select them all. It doesn't matter whether you select them all, or pick the same selection. But you could be more specific. And you could say, these are the only ones that I want to update. And back to, I could do project wide and pick all of them, or I could go active drawing. And then everything updates.

And that's really where the time savers are really coming in handy here. So back to our information here with the PowerPoint. We have producing the reports. So with this functionality, it's very important that-- if you want to get accurate reports and save a lot of time, it's definitely important that you're using as much of the AutoCAD Electrical that you can.

So even though you could phase it in, you could just do the title block update for right now, you could add the Bill of Material to it, it's very important that you end up putting as much as you can.

Because your goal, I would think, would be to produce as much and save as much time as you can. So produce as much of the accurate data, not worrying about the dumb text, and wanting to extract these reports. So this is just an example of the schematic report, that image that you see there. But we could take advantage of the folders. We could take advantage of the installation location, section, subsection codes that I talked about. All of those can be taken advantage of.

And then any combination of drawing that are in the project could be extracted using that project-wide reporting that I talked about. Regardless of which one you go to, it's the same dialog box that comes up so you don't have to relearn anything. So if you were to pick the report, you didn't do active drawing, you said, hey, let me pick the project, you'll get another dial up box, which is that active, or project-wide updating tool that you could pick the drawing combination.

And you already know where-- some of that information because I just went over it. But the section codes, the subfolders, and that type of thing. So let's take a look at it.

So back here at my AutoCAD Electrical, we know we want to run report, or a report, or a multiple reports. So to make it easy, we just pick on the report tool. Now, what's nice about this is there are other reports we could do. We could set up automatic reports. We can look at reports just specifically to the panel. I happen to be on a schematic. So I could use this tool right here. But there are other reports in here.

And one of the other reports that I would highly recommend, let's say that you are deciding to go fully into AutoCAD Electrical and you feel really good about yourself because you've spent a lot of time, you've worked in this project, and you realize that you're ready to release it to production. So all you have to do is just send it out. But you're not sure 100% whether you actually did everything correctly.

So you run this Electrical audit and then you go, wow, I find I got errors. So in this case, project wide, I have 92 errors. Now, that seems like a lot. And it is. They are purposely built in this particular data set. So since I was concentrating on this one drawing, I'm going to go to the active drawing. There are five errors. Let's just say I had five errors across the entire project and you're kind of feeling a little down because you thought you did such a good job.

But now, you ran this checker. And that's how I look at this. This is a checker replacing the person that maybe would normally check it. It's always good to have a person checking it. But this one, if you're lean on personnel you could use this to double check yourself. Or if you have a team and they say, hey, I'm done, make this a requirement. Make them have to run this audit.

This will not fix anything, but it will identify information. So you're thinking you're done, and you realize wherever there's a red circle, you realize that there's an error. So it says, no wire connection. And you're thinking, now, I thought for sure I did that. So let's go take a look at it. Now imagine if the drawing was a little bit more complicated. So I can leave this dialog box open, hit Go To, and there it is.

The other one is the one to the right. So what I should have done-- see, I can leave that drawing open, and dialog box open, and navigate around. So my choices were to add a source here because maybe this went to another ladder on another drawing just like I showed you earlier with those. So I could add a source, and then a matching destination wherever it went. And it can be on the same drawing, or a different drawing.

The other option would be just to trim them. Now, I can take care of that even right here. I can just go up and use the trim tool. So notice, I can come in here and pick this trim tool. And I would be able to just trim that out. And that would actually solve the problem. Or I could add that source or destination, pending in this case, a source, and tell it that, hey, this continues on another one.

The other one is also the missing catalog data. So you're thinking, you put everything in there. So remember when I went in to look up in that database? You thought you put everything in there. And this is a-- I'll call it a classic. Wires that aren't connected, catalog missing-- because you're trying to get the circuit done. So you forgot to put the catalog date in there. So let's go take a look at that.

So there it is. You're like, wow. I thought I got that done. And I could right click on it, edit it, add the information that I need. And then there's also contacts in this one. You're a bad parent, you didn't put your-- you got your chair-- your child is orphaned, and it's kind of sitting around. You're like, wow. I thought I connected that too. So I go to it, there's my child. It's not connected. Here are some other children that are connected. And I edit this. And I can go through and connect them.

And then the same thing with this motor starter. It's got that information. So very quickly, you can go do that. Let me show you another one here where just looking at it from a connectivity, this one is connected to this guy right here. So if I were to surf on that, it would let me know that whether on the same drawing, the last time I did this was on a different drawing, this is on the same drawing. So that's where there's the intelligent, making sure that you're good, running the reports.

So that's why that would be very important. Another one that would be important would be this DWG audit. So this one will fix information that you may have messed up on. Matter of fact, what I'll do is zoom extents. I don't really need this up here anymore. I'll get rid of that. And zooming extents on the active drawing, run into DWG can really make a big difference too.

I can do it project wide. And what you're doing is if you happen to use some of those AutoCAD commands, you might have left remnants of wires and wire numbers. And you want to get rid of them so that this is what this tool is. So this reports on potential errors, but it also fixes. So it's a little bit different. And it helps you clean them up. So any AutoCAD commands you might have used in there might have-- it would be just one tool of many to help you clean it up.