Move Through Project Drawings (5:24 min)

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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Our next step is to actually look

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at all the different things that we can

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do to move through our project.

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What does this project FILE actually provide us,

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and what are the things that we can

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do with it to be able to make it easier

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to navigate our entire AutoCAD Electrical project?

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One of my favorite things is something called the surfer.

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So the surfer could be accessed in a few ways.

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Now I'm going to show you the most common way,

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and I'm also going to show you where

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it's located in another spot.

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If I were to right click on any component,

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you'll see that there's this little fun marking

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menu that gives us all of the most common commands that we

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might want to use on an individual component.

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We have unique marking menus throughout all

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of AutoCAD Electrical.

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So every different type of image or block or whatever

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it is that you see on screen is going

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to have a different marking menu associated with it.

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If I go over to the surfer, what this just did

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is scanned the entire project for all related devices

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to this particular control relay that I clicked on.

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So it surfed through the project.

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Now, that project has a parent device

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which is the one I was on, and that's showing me

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exactly where it's located.

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And then if I double click on this next one,

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it actually zooms me up on that device.

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So it's allowing me to literally surf through the entire project

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to find all of these connected devices.

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So this is a child component.

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If I were to double click on the next one,

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it's going to jump me to a completely different drawing

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in this project.

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This is the power of a project because they are connected now.

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I'm on a different DWG file, but it zooms me right up

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on that connected device.

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Now the last one in this list with this little footprint

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symbol is actually the panel footprint.

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And when we see panel in electrical,

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it doesn't have to be an enclosure.

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It often is but it doesn't have to be that.

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A panel is just any physical representation of that device

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that you are drawing into your schematics.

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So all of the wiring information,

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all of the connections in the schematics

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then will relay that back out to whatever

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your physical display is.

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It could be the location of those devices along a conveyor,

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it could be an entire mechanical unit of something else.

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It does not have to be a panel as the title of this infers,

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but it is obviously also designed for enclosures.

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Now I could go back to the parent symbol

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and it will navigate me right back to that same control relay

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that I was just on.

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And that's the power of the surfing tool

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and having all of those connected devices

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across all of these drawings in our project.

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Now the other way to get to the server

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is up here in our quick access toolbar

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or here on our project tab.

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Now in AutoCAD Electrical we have access

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to all core vanilla AutoCAD commands.

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However, most of them are turned off in our ribbons

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because we don't need all of those other ribbon tools.

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However, you can turn them on any time you want.

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The tabs we do have that you don't have in vanilla AutoCAD

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are the ones specific to electrical like project,

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schematic, panel, reports, all very task based.

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So all very oriented to what it is that you're trying to do.

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So the server tool is located on the Project tab here.

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Now the one extra that the ribbon

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gives us is it gives us this continuous surfer.

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So if you ended up exiting out of the surfer

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command for wherever you were but you had navigated

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to a couple drawings away, if you

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wanted to be able to pull that same surfer back up

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you'd see where you had been with the little X's that

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are next to where you've navigated

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and you'd be able to jump right back to what you were doing.

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So this is a little bit of a hidden command,

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it's a little bit of a hidden gem

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if you need it when you're surfing.

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So this is all about moving through our projects.

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Now, the next couple of things to talk about here

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are just the basics.

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We have this previous to next drawing buttons

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and they're also located here.

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Be careful not to confuse them with your undo and redo arrows.

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They do look different, but they're not

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far away from each other.

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So there is a difference.

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There is undo and redo, core AutoCAD undo and redo.

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And then that's previous to next.

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And what previous to next do is they

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save the drawing you're on, close it and open the next.

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Seems simple but just keep that in mind

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because as you're double clicking through the list

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if I were to just keep opening drawings,

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you're going to see them all start populating up here

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as all of these open drawings.

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In my session they could be in or out of my active project.

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They could still be open but they're no longer a part

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of the project I'm working on.

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So keep in mind what you have open.

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Sometimes you can have hundreds of Windows

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and not even realize that you're doing that.

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So the previous to next is just a different way

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to step through your whole project

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without opening each drawing to keep them simultaneously open.

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Take a minute and move through your project drawings

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in the next exercise.