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How to deal with repetitive enclosures

Question asked by Daniel Myers on May 29, 2014
Latest reply on Mar 9, 2015 by Bruce Perry

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Often we have projects that a box will be built identically 20 times, used in multiple places in the same installation. It has some I/O, wires, and cables coming out of it plugging into some sensors. Sometimes not all of the sensors will be used. The customer is asking for separate drawings for each of the 20 boxes, even though the only difference is whether a sensor cable is plugging in or not.

Our worry of doing so many nearly identical drawings is that it will take a very long time to make revisions, since they will have to be done to all of the drawings. And we are also having problems creating exact duplicates of things in SolidWorks Electrical, without quite a bit of hassle.

Has anyone had to deal with similar situations to this, and what did you do? It doesn't have to be limited to SolidWorks Electrical.

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Phil Johnston May 29, 2014 6:54 PM
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Do you have any experience with Solidworks 3D? It has a very powerful feature called "Design Table". I wonder if something like that would work for this...I can't say I have any suggestions for a solution for you, but I wanted to put the idea of a design table out, in case others know of a way using something like that.
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- Daniel Myers @ Phil Johnston on May 29, 2014 6:58 PM
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  I haven't played with the design table, but ya, this issue is pretty much trying to use configurations in the electrical schematic.
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  - Phil Johnston @ Daniel Myers on May 29, 2014 7:03 PM
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    Configurations is definitely one of the key features I hope to see in the next SP. There are actually quite a few, very powerful features in 3D that could be applied, with some tweaks, to SWE. I'm hoping Solidworks will continue to flesh out SWE and add more power/more flexibility.
    
    I'm constantly running into SWE's limitations as I'm in the Avionics industry and SWE was very obviously not designed for that industry, instead almost exclusively focused on control panel/industrial control design.
    
    I wonder if there is some SQL feature/manager that could work for what you need? I know very little about SQL databases, but as I'm learning more about it, I see it has a lot of power.
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    - Daniel Myers @ Phil Johnston on May 29, 2014 7:13 PM
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      It's almost less of a limitation on SolidWorks, and more of me just not even being able to envision a good way of doing it.
      
      Basic idea I am working on right now is that we'd have one drawing that shows just the internals of the enclosure, which 100% of the time are the same. Then have a few other drawings showing each possible configuration of sensors, which would show some cables entering the enclosure.
      
      This would be kinda annoying trying to follow, especially since they are such simple circuits. And I can't have cables unconnected at one end, so it would require some faking up to do.
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    - Daniel Myers @ Phil Johnston on May 29, 2014 7:19 PM
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      Do you have any suggestions on how those 3D features could be tweaked to make work in Electrical? They do read these forums sometimes.
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Michael Pretekin May 29, 2014 7:52 PM
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Daniel, are you using wires exclusively in your design, or are you also associating cables to those wires?
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- Daniel Myers @ Michael Pretekin on May 30, 2014 1:31 PM
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  We are associating cables to the wires.
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  - Michael Pretekin @ Daniel Myers on May 30, 2014 3:28 PM
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    This was in our top three biggest problems with SWE. No way to effectively create or manage variations on a design at this point.
    
    That being said suppose you duplicated the project and modified each one with the appropriate variants of the design. This keeps the reporting clean but presents the issue of how to manage modifications to your baseline, which is the box itself.
    
    So for that, if you had to revise the box, could you make your revisions in one project, and then make a macro of that entire portion of the design, then simply paste it in place for each of the remaining configurations?
    
    I'm not saying it's pretty, but I wonder if it could work.
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Tom Evans Jul 16, 2014 11:48 AM
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Hello Daniel,

About to do something similar. I think i am going to try having the box be its own drawing set. Then I will put that in as a mfg part. I would then only need to connect the cables for each section.

I will let you know how it works.
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Robert Degiorgio Aug 21, 2014 9:10 AM
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All our projects have multiply units (sometimes up to 22 units) placed next to each other. Not all units are the same, but there are a set of terminals/wires that are common to all the units and have to be wired from one unit to another.

We are still in a learning curve in this area, especially in the 3D electrical department.

What we have done is created books for every different type of unit. We have also successfully created the 3D Electrical routing using Solidworks Electrical for each different individual unit.
Our idea is to create another book in which all the common terminals/wiring for the units are replicated in a single schematic drawing.
We still have to see how to go about the 3D routing. We have encountered a lot of software problem ( SWE2013) In the coming weeks we will be upgrading to 2014 with the latest sp4. Hopefully a lot of issues will be ironed out.

More forum talk is need in this area with multiple units and the use of 3D Electrical. Keep tune in on this subject.
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- Tom Evans @ Robert Degiorgio on Aug 21, 2014 9:20 AM
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  I used multiple books as you sugest. I did add a function mark for each different book. I added this mark to component and wire marks. I modified the orgin destination arrows to show which book they are going too.
  
  ie. from book a to book b the mark would be book#-File_Row_mark. in the same book it drops the book#- and just has file and row mark.
  
  I have not tried any of the 3d stuff yet.
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  - Robert Degiorgio @ Tom Evans on Aug 22, 2014 1:59 AM
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    I do not know if I made myself clear on what is required from us. The figure attached shows only the common wiring from one panel to another.
    3 books have been created for the 3 types of different units (a book for identical units A,B,F &G another for unit D and another for units C &E) Another book will be created for the common unit to unit wiring.
    this creates double terminals and if any changes are made in any of the first 3 books, these have to be added manually.
    How do you guys work if you have a similar project like this? do you still create books for all units even if there are identical units? Has anyone considered Locations within Locations for just the common wiring?
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  - Robert Degiorgio @ Tom Evans on Nov 15, 2014 5:59 AM
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    When last I posted my view and ways of working , I forgot to tell you that we had to do a lot of manual work to do on the project books. We found out that if you duplicate
    a book in the same project, all files in the document tab are copied correctly but the components of the duplicated book in the component tab remain in the original book and you have to move them manually. Am I doing something wrong or is this a bug in the software??
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    - Daniel Myers @ Robert Degiorgio on Nov 17, 2014 1:07 PM
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      I HATE how un-intuitively the program deals with components and books.. How it works is in the properties of Location X, it has a drop down menu to choose which book it belongs to. Any components that is in Location X then also belong to its book. By default every location is set to be in book1. You just have to remember to set this field, or when you generate one report by book, everything will show up in book 1.
      
      Robert, what exactly did you mean that you had to move the components manually? Like when you generate your report, explode it and move the text fields around?
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      - Robert Degiorgio @ Daniel Myers on Nov 18, 2014 4:34 AM
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        Hi Daniel
        Thanks for your response,
        Sometimes it is difficult to explain oneself. I will try to clear up my problem. First it is not a problem of report.
        I have a book which has a location with sub-locations in it. Function default is F1.
        Now I need to copy the book in the same project (reason being that the second circuit is very similar to the first so it stands to reason that I do not have to start afresh).
        I have prepared a new book with a new location and sub-locations equivalent to the first structure of the first book. I also created a second function F2. both Location and function of the second book are set to default. (see figures)
        My 2nd book is still empty, now I need to copy the contents of the1st book to the 2nd one. (see fig)
        
        I have tried normal paste and paste special, as I said before all documents will be copied the problem arises in the component tag.
        
        I suggest you give this a try with a simple circuit (a lamp, switch & supply will be sufficient)
        I will continue this discussion later on, hope that I can get some feed back.
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Robert Degiorgio Dec 17, 2014 4:15 AM
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Hi Daniel
I will continue with the discussion that I left pending last time, regarding the copying to a second book. The figure shows the component tag before copying
Back to the document tag, when documents are copied the result is as shown below, all is well.
But if you look at the component tag the result is not what I expected (see fig below)
As you can see the components (circled in black) are still in the first book whereas the second book is still empty (compared with the fig on the right before copying). Am I doing something wrong, is it the procedure that I am doing or is it something SWE need to address?
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- Daniel Myers @ Robert Degiorgio on Dec 17, 2014 1:24 PM
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  If you check the properties of the sheets in the second book, what location do they have?
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  - Robert Degiorgio @ Daniel Myers on Dec 18, 2014 1:40 AM
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    Hi Daniel
    I have checked all the properties in all the sheets and they still refer to the location in book 1
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Bruce Perry Mar 9, 2015 10:11 AM
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Hello Daniel:

I work with similar a situation. I work with solar combiner boxes or enclosures. What the customer wants is an enclosure with different sets of fuses.
for example they will have a set of 6-12-18 or 24. Then there will be the enclosures sizes 24-24-8, 20-20-10, I think you get the idea. We what I've done is setup a configuration for each set of fuses, in my case 2 thru 24. So what ever the combination I have a configuration for it. I also used the design table to control the configurations. You will need to determine your own case so that these combined assemblies or configuration sets work for you. So now I can drop in the Fuse sub-assemble into my assembly and pick what ever configuration I want. Now to get closer to what I think you are looking for. I then create my drawings. I first want my first page to show the enclosure labels so I have a front view with labels and balloon call outs, (p.s. don't forget
when you create the Bill of materials table to select the properties to link the balloons to the table for the views other wise the balloons will be different), my next view is of the enclosure open to show the inside door labels. The next page will show just the inside of the sub panel; the fuses holders, disconnect switch, etc. This is where I think you want to be... I do this by creating display states; I have three for my enclosures, one is the DEFAULT, which all the items are shown; the enclosure, labels, sub panel, etc., the second is the SUBPANEL; here I hide the enclosure, a lexan cover guard, and the enclosure labels, and the third is a DOOR, here I hide everything except the door cover, the door labels, and door hardware, This is my third sheet that shows dimensional location of the labels, I have the front view and the door inside view. In a nut shell I have configurations for 1 thru 6 fuses, 7 thru 12, fuses etc. then these have display states for DEFAULT, SUBPANEL, DOOR. So try with SUBASSEMBLY configurations with design tables, then DISPLAY STATES to show what you want in you drawings.
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