3 Electrical Design Delighters that will Speed Up Schematic Creation

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In February we announced the latest updates to our cloud-connected and browser-based solutions, including Electrical Schematic Designer, as part of R2024x functional delivery (FD) 01.

Sometimes it’s the little things you use all day that can have the biggest impact on your productivity. We call these enhancements “delighters.” In the R2024x FD01 update you will find various delighters that will have a big impact on your workflow, enabling you to be more productive.

Before I dive into what’s new, here’s some background about Electrical Schematic Designer, for those of you who don’t know or may be interested in upping your electrical game. Electrical Schematic Designer was launched as part of the 2022 release and is available as a role in the 3DEXPERIENCE Works portfolio. This role is targeted at electrical designers and enables them to create intelligent electrical schematics and connect their data to the cloud-based 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

It’s a purpose-built solution for designing electrical systems, and includes schematic creation, selection of manufacturer’s parts, creation of control panel drawings and organization of the design by functional areas and locations, including control panels or specific areas of a machine or other product. Some regions refer to this as “electro-technical design.” You can connect your data to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to store your electrical system designs and take advantage of the platform’s collaboration and data management capabilities, right from one convenient interface.

The enhancements in this release include the following:

  • The ability to open schematic drawings and automatically zoom to fit that entire schematic to your screen.
  • Streamlined project collaboration between electrical users with new link saving and sharing of content in the Electrical Content Portal (ECP).
  • Managing design changes involving cables or cable cores is quicker and more intuitive.

Let’s take a closer look at what’s new in this round.

Automatic Zoom to Fit – save schematic editing time.

There’s a new option under the Interface configuration menu called “Zoom to fit when opening a drawing,” which automatically zooms to fit any schematic drawing you open to the full screen size.

When users are finished with their work in an electrical project they usually save-it wherever they are working in a schematic (typically zoomed into various details.) This new Zoom to Fit option is great, especially for people opening a previously updated electrical project so the new user can see the big picture. Opening in full screen reduces clicks and adjustment of schematic views saving schematic editing time. This is especially valuable when moving between electrical schematic sheets in large projects as each schematic will open in zoom to fit mode.

 

Save Links from Electrical Content Portal (ECP) – easily save or share electrical content while shopping the portal.

Electro-technical design of machinery and other products typically involves using lots of standard components. The ECP is a great place to find the electrical content you need for a design. Here you can conveniently grab any content that catches your eye and use it. Now, you can also just select the content and hit the “Get link” option and simply copy and paste it in your desired location to share with your team. You can paste it in your “Communities” or “Conversations” on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, or in an email to share with team members.

 

 

Find Cables in Your Design – speed up electrical design changes with the ability to easily find a cable.

Cable management has been improved with the ability to select a cable or cable core from the Design Tree and go directly to the where it is used in your schematic drawings. This is a very powerful way to find particular wires and cables, especially useful when you have hundreds of schematic sheets. Using the “Go to drawing option,” available on the right mouse button option you can easily jump to a particular page location.

 

These enhancements are available now so you can start taking advantage of them today! What’s great about the cloud-connected and browser-based roles is you don’t have to wait for an annual release as we update them throughout the year, bringing enhancements to you more frequently.

Summary of Electrical Schematic Designer and it’s Electrical Design Functionality

Unlike other electrical design tools, Electrical Schematic Designer is made for both SOLIDWORKS and CATIA users, especially those involved with electro-technical design, including jobs such as generating machinery electrical systems, control panels and cabinets. You’ll notice when you open the role it’s branded as CATIA, but when you start up the app you will see SOLIDWORKS inside.

Electrical Schematic Designer offers the great functionality of SOLIDWORKS Electrical Schematic Professional desktop so you can efficiently create electrical schematics, control panel drawings, reports, and other electrical design documentation, and then safely store your data on the platform to easily find and share data from a web-browser.

Key Capabilities of Electrical Schematic Designer include:

  • Electro-technical schematic creation– Produce complete documentation of complex electrical systems for machines and industrial equipment using single line and multi-line schematics.
  • 2D control (cabinet) panel drawings– Generate 2D panel representations from an electrical schematic with 2D outlines of electrical components.
  • Electrical component and symbol library– Access an extensive library of industry-standard schematic symbols, combined with a database of manufacturer parts, to provide an easily customizable and adaptable parts base through easy-to-use import tools.
  • Design reuse– Reuse circuit design elements, such as circuit macros, along with non-Electrical Schematic Designer content, through easy-to-use import wizards.
  • Report Generation– Generate reports automatically based on real-time design database queries and create custom reports via integrated custom report creation tools.
  • Design Rule Checks (DRCs)– DRCs scan the project for specific errors and then provide a report on what those errors are and where they appear in the project for a variety of different potential issues.
  • Use of SOLIDWORKS Electrical Schematic data– Open and edit and continue to develop an existing SOLIDWORKS Electrical schematic originally created on desktop, then store to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

For more information visit: https://www.solidworks.com/product/electrical-schematic-designer.

Stay up to date and learn about more 3DEXPERIENCE Works solutions available to you now at: https://SOLIDWORKS.com/xWhatsNew. Also, if there’s an enhancement or new feature you’d like to see in Electrical Schematic Designer, let us know!

Eric Leafquist

Eric Leafquist

Eric Leafquist is a Senior Product Manager at SOLIDWORKS involved with electrical and routed systems, along with other areas of the product. Prior to joining SOLIDWORKS, he held various positions in electro-mechanical product design and engineering in the chemical process industry. In his free time, he enjoys cycling on his Trek road bike (designed with SOLIDWORKS) for cancer research fundraising events.