Add Wire Numbers (3:23 min)

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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Now that we've actually learned

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how to insert ladders, edit wires, and do point

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to point wiring, let's talk about how to get

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your numbers on our drawing.

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It's one of the most tedious tasks

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to do if you have to do it manually.

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But I don't want you to blink because it's

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going to happen that fast inside of AutoCAD Electrical.

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Now all we have to do, the key to setting this up the way

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that you want it is making sure those settings in your drawing

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properties and your project properties

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are how you want them.

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If you remember from our earlier lesson in those properties,

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when you right click on a drawing

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and you go to the drawing properties,

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it is going to be looking at what we have set up

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for wire number format.

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Now in this case, I am just using %n,

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which is the line reference number.

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So that's going to be mimicked then into the wire number.

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And if there are line breaks in the wires,

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meaning there are additional components inserted on it,

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that's when it will jump to the suffix setup.

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So this is the key to making sure these

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are set how you want them.

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You also need to make sure that you have

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where you want your wire numbers placed.

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Do you want them above the wire, in line,

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which you can actually define what the gap set up looks like?

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So this is an intelligent gap, it's not

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an actual break in the wire.

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It's enough that Electrical knows

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to just put that wire in there.

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Or below the wire.

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And if they're above or below, you

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can actually have it put in leaders as needed.

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You can either say you always want a leader,

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you never want one.

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Or if it's crammed in against other components

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if it's a very busy ladder, you can have it do it as required.

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So it'll see if there's a collision

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and automatically throw a leader up to connect it to that wire.

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You can also define whether or not

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you want the wire numbers to stay centered on the wire

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itself between the components that break that wire

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or if you wanted it just a specific offset.

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In this case, I'm going to leave it centered, my %n.

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And we are ready to go.

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So now, all I'm going to do is click on the wire numbers

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command here.

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I'm going to say you tag and re-tag all.

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It should always be safe to do a re-tag.

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You should never feel uncomfortable

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doing that assuming you're not manually editing wire numbers,

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you're instead just throwing all of your wire numbers

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and utilizing those replaceable parameters

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we just talked about.

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So when I do that, I'm going to then hit

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the Drawing Wide in this case.

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You could do Project Wide.

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But for demonstration purposes, we're

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just going to do this, Drawing Wide.

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And you'll see it populate all of the wire numbers

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very quickly.

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Now one of the things we have not

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talked about yet in Electrical is the use of layers

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other than the wire layers themselves.

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And there's a reason for that.

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In AutoCAD Electrical, all layer properties are used.

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There's a significant amount of layers

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being utilized by the software but it's doing it on its own.

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So it doesn't need you to tell it what layers to put things

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on, it organizes it based off of the type of component or piece

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of electrical that it is.

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So if you notice, all of the wire numbers came in green.

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They are on their own wire layer called wire numbers.

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Now please take a moment to do the very quick exercise

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on adding wire numbers.