SOLIDWORKS: Electrical - Shortcuts to Project Design, Data Reuse

Electrical – Shortcuts to Project Design, Data Reuse

How do we increase the speed that you are able to produce projects? In SOLIDWORKS Electrical there are many different methodologies that help us develop and design projects. As we build up projects, we inherently become faster and faster at design based on the tools we learned and the experience we gain from understanding where the tool are for design. The work you do in these projects, even if it’s just one, has data that we can reuse over and over again. Having this information will allow us to develop the next project faster.
In schematic development, our basic goal is to produce documentation that can transfer technical information quickly and efficiently. These elements can include everything from electrical schematics to harnesses to process and instrumentation diagrams. Every element set can be broken down into categories like power circuits, control, etc. When we have these basic design elements, there will be times when in design we will want to reuse this information.
This is where templates, configurations, macros, project macros, and other tools in SOLIDWORKS Electrical will come into play. When there is an opportunity for data reuse. At the start, we have project configurations. These will control your standards that include ANSI vs IEC as well as text sizes and other global project parameters. All of this info can be setup a single time and saved into a template. After you creation of a template, titleblocks will be developed in accordance to you project configurations. Again, these can be setup to be within your primary template. As we design, we do not have to worry about conforming to a standard if it’s already setup!
As we develop additional schematics, each schematic has the opportunity to be saved for future use. Did you create a motor circuit or harnessing design that will be used in many project? Save it as a macro! This will make it easier to use the next time you need it without having to redesign the schematic. Full schematic sheets can be saved as project macros as well.
With each project, we begin to build a power template and library of element we use in design. This snowball effect takes us from taking a few day for a project design to a few hours to a few minutes.

Brian Do
Application Engineer
Computer Aided Technology