Single line diagrams in ACADE 2006

[jguest]

Does anyone else do Single Line Diagrams for documenting of power distribution systems?

i.e. where a single line intersected with three short diagonal dashes (usually representing a cable) drawn through single pole components is used to create a simplified drawing version of a three phase installation, most commonly used when drawing commercial/industrial switchboards.

If so, have you found any provision for this type of drawing in AutoCAD Electrical?

I may be wrong, or I may just have not looked hard enough yet, but I can't seem to find any symbols or settings that can be used for this purpose, nor does it appear that any of the logic of the database operations within AutoCAD Electrical are set up to cater for this type of drawing.

[jguest]

Originally Posted by jguest

Does anyone else do Single Line Diagrams for documenting of power distribution systems?

I gather I can take the silence as a resounding 'No', then?

Oh well, I might post a small library of symbols once I get them done then. They may not be a whole lot of help to most though, as they will be to Australian Standards.

[csmith.134514]

Well, I don't know why you couldn't just use single fuses & circuit breakers and manually draw a single line schematic. You could even add wire layers for the correct sizing. I don't think that there is a "1 Line drawing" format setup in AcadE though just "Point to Point" wiring. You will probably have to create new blocks for transformers and other "1 Line" components. I'm not sure how AcadE would resolve the differences with 1 line dwgs.

[jguest]

Originally Posted by csmith.134514

Well, I don't know why you couldn't just use single fuses & circuit breakers and manually draw a single line schematic....

I can, and I do, but by doing that you end up with either only a single instance of, say, a circuit breaker, where there should be three, or else you get a depiction of a single pole breaker with the wrong part number manually allocated to the symbol in order to provide a 3-pole breaker in the parts list.

It would be nice to be able to draw a true single line diagram and not have to fudge the part numbers one way or another - that was the point of my original post. It would also be nice to have the database cope with this situation natively and add the correct annotation to the drawing where required when drawing in "single line" mode.

I guess the essence of my question was "Is the 'single line drawing' something that is unique to Australian draughting, or is it used woirld wide?"

[jweaver]

We aren't using ACADE (yet) but single line diagrams are an essential part of utility design work. At least the ones I have experience with. (USA)

Are you working in the electrical distrubtion industry? If so I would like to discuss your current uses of ACE sometime. We are in the process of researching ECAD applications.

Thanks.

[jguest]

Originally Posted by jweaver

Are you working in the electrical distrubtion industry?

Not as such, no. we own the high voltage assets on our site, though, so we have to document the 7 substations across our 50 acre site (ranging from 750kVA to 1.5MVA) and all of the downstream equipment, both industrial and domestic.

At the moment I mainly use ACADE for its project management capabilities, which is actually really useful to me. I'm still waiting for the opportunity to see how it goes on a small to medium project where absolutely everything that's being installed is brand new. I find that it's a bit limiting to be trying to integrate an existing set of drawings into a new project where you are expanding an existing installation. Not impossible, but there's only so much time that you can allocate to redrawing existing drawings before it becomes unjustifiable.

I think it would be much more successful on a brand new project where every component used is fully compliant with the standards and uses a proper AutCAD Electrical block symbol.