Create A New Project (11:37 min)

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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Let's get started.

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I'm creating a brand new project from scratch.

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More than likely, this is not an activity

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you will have to do very often.

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But we need to do it to be able to see

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all of the pieces and parts that go into creating a project.

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Once you have a good solid project,

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you will use that as a template and copy

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that into all downstream projects you create.

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So let's get started on creating a brand

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new project from scratch.

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More than likely you won't do that very often.

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So this is just to get us going to speak

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about the different factors that go into building a project.

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Once we have a good solid project,

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the rest is going to come together.

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Because you'll be copying probably

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projects down the line as template projects

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and you won't need to do this from scratch any further.

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Still important to know all of the factors that

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go into building a project.

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So if I were to create a brand new project from scratch,

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I would utilize the small little toolbar

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at the top of my project manager here.

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And this button is our new project button.

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So I'm going to click on that and it

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will open up this Create New Project dialog box.

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Now, you can give it whatever name you want.

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And you can see that the default location for this to go to

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is built by where you install AutoCAD Electrical.

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This is a very, very important topic

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to discuss at the beginning of this training.

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How you install AutoCAD Electrical

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is crucial to your success with it.

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If all you did was install it by clicking into the installer,

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just accepting OK, and having it install the software.

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You probably need to pause this training right now

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and go back and do a repair or an update on your software.

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The reason for that is, if you actually

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open up the configuration dialog box within the installer.

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It allows you to then choose the manufacturers

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that you want, the symbol libraries that you want,

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and the locations where you want those located.

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My install setup is with all manufacturers and all symbol

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libraries.

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I also have everything set to the default of going to my C

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drive, but that means that I am working independently

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of anybody else.

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In most cases, we would want to see sharing symbol libraries

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and catalog databases across all of your users.

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So that everybody has access to the same symbols

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and the same catalog information.

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And that way updates from anybody within the team

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are then seen by all of the other team members.

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This step is Absolutely crucial to your success

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with AutoCAD Electrical.

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If you are in a vaulted environment.

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If you have AutoCAD or Inventor or any other package

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that Autodesk has and you're utilizing vault.

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This is a great tool with AutoCAD Electrical,

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but that's for a different class.

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So just keep that in mind as you go to install your AutoCAD

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Electrical and if you haven't in your thinking,

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"I need to fix this right now."

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It can easily be done by going back into your installation

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and re-choosing all of those configurations

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and then you can jump right back into this training.

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OK, so with where this is located on my computer

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right now, I'm going to leave it there.

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I'm not worried about moving it.

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You probably going to be managing it though

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into different project folders in areas

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so that you can do that to manage it with whatever

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your file systems are.

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Now, one of the key things for me

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is I'm going to create a folder with the project name.

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Because my project and all of my drawings

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are still going to live together in the same spot.

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So a project file and I'll show it to you in just a second,

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is a WDP file, a unique file to AutoCAD Electrical

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and it lives as a text document.

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So when we open it we're just going to see it in Notepad.

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The beauty of this is you can easily edit it,

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you can easily see what it's tracking.

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But it carries all of the information

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of all of the connected drawings and settings

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that you want to keep across all of the drawings

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within that whole project.

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So your drawings are still individual DWGs.

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Very important, if you're sharing this

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with people who don't have Electrical

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that's absolutely fine.

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But this project is what's going to manage

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all of those drawings that are within it.

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Your project could have two drawings in it,

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it could have 200 drawings in it, there's no limit.

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It's meant to manage however you want.

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We'll talk a little more about strategy of what a project

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file does in a little bit.

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So when I create this new project,

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I'm not going to browse to change any of these things.

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I can copy an existing project which right now it's

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utilizing the project I have as my active project.

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And I can have it copy all of the existing settings in that.

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I'll take you through that in a minute.

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We don't have to worry about that right now.

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So I'm going to hit OK.

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And it's going to put my brand new project as my top project

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in my project manager.

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That means it is my active project.

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So it's bolded, it's the only one that's bolded

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and that's how you know that that is the active project.

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You always want to work in your active project

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very, very important.

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In there I have no other drawings under it.

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Notice that there are no plus signs next to this.

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I don't have drawings in this project yet,

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it is just a project.

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But let's talk about what this project can already

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start to develop for me.

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I'm going to right click on it and you'll

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see that the right click menu is unique to an active project

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versus an inactive project.

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Just to show that, this is everything

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I can do in an active project and this is what I

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can do in an inactive project.

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Again, reinforcing how important it is to actually make sure

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your project is active at all times

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that you're working in it.

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Now you can have as many projects in that project list.

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The key to this is actually having

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that be the active project whenever

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you're working on specific drawings within that project.

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So back in here.

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Let's just talk about everything crucial to what we're doing.

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So we're going to go all the way to the bottom

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and go to the project properties.

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This is what makes a project so powerful.

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So this project I can now define what symbol libraries

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I want to utilize for it.

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Now, AutoCAD Electrical comes with many different symbol

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libraries, you can see I am currently using NFPA.

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It has NFPA, the old legacy JIC for anybody

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who needs that from older drawings, so these of the US

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standards.

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As well as I 3-ply for the US standard in metric form.

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It has IEC standards in both the older standards and the latest

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standards for international code,

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and it has Japanese, Chinese and Australian standards.

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This is another thing that is very important

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to make sure you install during the configuration

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of the install.

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So that you can have access to all of those libraries.

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If you don't, you will only get one.

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So there's no extra cost, there's no extra thing to it,

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you just have to make sure you add those to your install.

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Now, I am currently using NFPA but the beauty

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of defining this in the project properties

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lets me switch and toggle.

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Maybe I'm going to do a job for somebody overseas

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and I need to be able to use the International standard.

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Because I know that that's the code that's

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going to be looked for in that project set.

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Very important that you level set that in the beginning.

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So these are all of my libraries that are pre-setup.

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We'll talk about icon menus but your library

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should match your icon menu, so NFPA to NFPA.

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And then our panel footprint libraries and you

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have two options with these you have the standard panel

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library or the panel library in metrick form.

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So again, based off of scaling in size

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that's the key to those different libraries.

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Now, the other things and we'll break into these deeper later

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but this is just really important for you to see here.

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The component tags, this allows us to do any automatic tagging,

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same thing's going to happen in wire numbers,

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in cross references.

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All the different tabs across this properties dialog box

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is going to allow us to define a standard tagging format.

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If you don't, you end up back in a manual mode,

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which is the whole goal of electrical to remove

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these manual efforts.

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So right now the default code for this is %F, %N,

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that means family code plus the line reference number.

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So if I insert a control relay like I did in the last module,

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then it's going to come in with a CR for control relay

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and whatever the line number is that I inserted it on.

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In my case, it was 416, so that became CR416.

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You can make this whatever you need it to be.

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If you go to Help inside of AutoCAD Electrical,

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you can search replaceable parameters.

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And that will give you all of the list of those percent

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codes, those replaceable parameters

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for how you can make your tags what you need

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them to be but still automated.

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You can also put text constants in there.

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So if you're utilizing line references

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it's really important that you then set up your suffixes.

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If we go in there that will tell us then,

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is my control relay, if I put a second one on that same wire

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is it going to get an A and then a B and then a C?

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Is it a dash one, a dash two, a dash three?

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You define that but this is all for setting that

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up so that the software can automatically

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run those tags for you.

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Now, any time in these project properties you see this icon.

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This icon means that it can be changed at the drawing level.

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So you can have unique settings for all

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of these things per each drawing.

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We'll talk about that when we build our first drawing

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but I want you to see the difference.

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The folders here mean that this can only be

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changed at the project level.

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So that's the difference between the two icons.

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You will not find the settings for this area

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in each individual drawing, you have to do it here

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at the project level.

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So this is component tagging, wire numbers,

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you can see how you want to set up all your wire numbers,

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they can even be based on different wire layer types.

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Your cross referencing information

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and what that looks like, how your arrows look,

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there's lots of different options in here.

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How your PLCs look, what does your wire

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do when it crosses another wire, how does it

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tee off of another wire.

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All of those different settings are in here

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so that you can standardize across all of your user base.

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To make sure that everybody's designing

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and having your drawing packages look the same way.

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And the final tab is the drawing format.

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Everything here can be changed at a drawing level,

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you typically would want to standardize this though

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across your whole project.

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And again, this is where you can define

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the width of your ladders if you are doing ladder design.

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It's where you can set your spacing of each rung

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and all of the other information that you see here.

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OK, so these are our project properties.

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We are set up now in this project.

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Now, I want you to take a moment to go out to your exercises

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and do the exercise called Create a New Project.