Has anyone ever been able to get the auto-generation of terminal block crawings to function at all? I just tried it and the results were so poor that I was trying to see if I should bother researching this function. Thanks.
Has anyone ever been able to get the auto-generation of terminal block crawings to function at all? I just tried it and the results were so poor that I was trying to see if I should bother researching this function. Thanks.
I too use a lot of 4 connection terminal block components with more than one symbol per block. The only drawings I have been able to create have been worse than nothing...literally. The potential seems to be there but it just seems that this has not received any serious attention yet from the developers.
That is really dependent on how you define poor or on the flip side how you define acceptable. What does an acceptable terminal block drawing look like to you? How are representing terminal blocks now?
I have some problems with terminal blocks myself and have spent considerable time figuring out workarounds. I still don't really like the results but perhaps there is some where I could be of help.
We normally use terminal blocks as power distribution nodes. We use single, double and triple tier blocks. Typically, we like to represent the terminal block connections as single, double or triple point connections. It took me a while to figure out how to get SWE to do this but the schematics look like this:
They show the terminal strip number/ref, block number, level (this is a double tier block) and pin/terminal number.
But the terminal block manager doesn't look very nice as there are gaps:
Likewise the auto-generated drawings have gaps but are readable:
It would be nice to have a little more control in the terminal strip manager. For instance to be able to move the destination/cables around to different locations by just dragging them around. In my case it would be nice if the terminal strip symbols didn't require at least two connection points (the ones I show above are just hiding the second connection point). From a logical stand point that make no sense unless there are bridges in place.
In the last few weeks, my terminal blocks have come a long way and I now have to say that the severe difficulties I had with this are all due to either:
I think that Terminal blocks are a great thing to work on now, and I am still having diffuculty, but I'm pretty sure that are will generater these drawings for all of our plans in the future, unless of course my company doesn't hire me back on a permanent basis, in which case good luck getting the engineers to figure that out. lol
It's still very hard; I was paid to sit and learn this for three weeks, but it basically works and can be very useful.
Could you post a few pictures of your schematic showing how you used the terminals, and then the terminal block drawings you were able to generate?
Here is a sample from a ship we are designing. showing the navigational alarm system:
Sorry that my terminal strips in the electrical scheme are not labelled; it used to work but no longer does. If you look at the component marks an the Terminal Blocks ("TB-##") in the line diagram, you should be able to identify Terminal Blocks 102 and 20.
I'm having a problem of getting different numbers top and bottom of a multi tear terminal block how did yo manage this?
I have not been able to get desirable results from this. This mostly has to do with our style of drawing terminal blocks, having multiple symbols appear for the same terminal block. We just use a generic terminal with 4 connection points on it, so we get way too many circuits on the terminal drawings.