Add Point To Point Wiring (5:34 min)

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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Now let's dive in to point-to-point wiring.

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Point-to-point wiring can mean a lot of different things

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throughout your electrical package.

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It could be that you're in a composite drawing like the one

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you see here.

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This is a blend of ladder diagrams

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along with components that are going

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to be pointed to one another.

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You'll see what I mean in just a second.

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The other option is perhaps you don't use a ladder at all,

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and you're just going directly from one component to another.

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What you're going to learn in this lesson

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will show you how to do that either way.

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The most basic form of this is when

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we zoom up on the terminals that you see here and the connectors

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that you see here.

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What I'm going to do is to start making connections to them.

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And what I want you to focus in on

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is the automatic wire routing that AutoCAD Electrical

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provides us.

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So I'm going to start with a wire.

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This time, I'm actually going to change the wire type.

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So I want you to see how I do that.

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I come down to the command prompt--

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here.

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And I can click on this wire type button,

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and I can switch to a different wire type.

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So this time, I'm going to choose RED_18 gauge.

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And click OK.

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Now all of the wires that I use, unless I go in and switch that

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again, is going to be under that RED_18 gauge layer.

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Now wires are just AutoCAD line entities not PE lines

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or any other kind of line entity but truly

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the AutoCAD line utilizing layers

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that have been predefined in our AutoCAD Electrical settings

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to be electrical wires.

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This is how it knows how to put wire numbers on them, how

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to do wire from twos-- it's where all of the automation

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then can happen when we want to run reports

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on any of our projects set.

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So now what I'm going to do is connect to this terminal.

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And I'm just going to come straight down and connect

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to the Connector.

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And I'm going to keep going across here.

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And I want you to see how it automatically routes these.

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Notice I didn't have to click where I wanted it to go.

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It would just automatically choose that route for me.

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Now you can choose along the way where you

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want those routes to happen.

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You're not forced to do it this way,

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but this is the beauty that it does automatic collision

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detection and then will auto route itself

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around those collisions.

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If you feel like the auto route was a little closer

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than you wanted it to be-- for instance, this one.

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There are great commands for editing our wires

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like Scoot, where we can right click and just choose Scoot.

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And it's a bit of a move mixed with a trim and an extend.

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So if you think of all these little commands and electrical

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as a combination of all of the commands we'd

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have to do in Vanilla AutoCAD, you'll

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see the power of such a simple command like Scoot.

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So I can keep adjusting this.

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And what you're seeing it do is extend one wire,

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trim another wire, and then move itself across

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to be able to give you that expansion.

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And that's the beauty of using the electrical tools as

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opposed to trying to go back to utilize our core AutoCAD

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tools that we're all so used to doing--

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not that they can't be done, just a lot more effort

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with that.

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OK, so that's the automatic wire routing.

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Let's take a look at some of the other wiring tools

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that we can have with point-to-point.

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So if we look over here at all of the terminals

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that are listed here, and you can

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see the Connector and the additional terminals

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that I have on the left hand side.

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I want to connect all of those, but I

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want to do it in one shot.

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I don't want to have to go manually one by one

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to connect each one of them.

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In this case, we have something called a Multiple Bus.

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If I click on that, I can choose that I want

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to go component-to-component.

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Now I can also then say, OK on this.

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And I can select--

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and I am going to turn off, in this case, my snap settings

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because I need to get pretty close to these components.

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So I am going to grab the left-hand Connector

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of my terminals.

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Be careful with terminals.

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They have connection points in all four quadrants.

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So if you noticed I had to be really careful about where

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I grabbed that crossing window to ensure I only

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made a wire connection on the left-hand terminal

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point as opposed to going through the top and the bottom

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as well.

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So things to be aware of when you're dealing

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with terminals themselves.

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Most of our other components don't have that many connection

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points on them.

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When I hit Enter, I automatically

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get wiring across all of them.

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Now I can starter make turns for where

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I want to take this wire path.

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So in this case, I want to take it up slightly.

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And I'm going to pull it out enough that it's not

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overlapping.

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If you noticed on line 712, I don't want it cutting back

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into the terminal.

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I'm going to bring it up, and then I'm

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going to turn it again.

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So if you're reading the command prompt at the bottom,

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you can see that there's an option to Continue or to Flip.

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The Flip would be if I was getting

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this view in the direction that I wanted to go

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and I didn't want them to be overlapped like that.

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So that's the reason to use Flip.

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But up here, I'm going to then hit C and Enter for Continue.

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And it's going to give me another set of arrows

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so that I can keep building how I want this route to go.

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I'm ready now.

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And so I'm going to zoom up and just

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start making connections one by one through these terminals,

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and then ultimately into this Connector,

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and the Connector auto routes to it.

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So it gave me all four connection points

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at the same time.

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So those are some of the great point-to-point tools

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that we have with an electrical.

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Please take a moment to go do the exercise

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on point-to-point wiring.