Wire Style Modification in SOLIDWORKS Electrical

The process of creating a large quantity of wire styles can be simplified through the use of Microsoft Excel. SOLIDWORKS Electrical can interface directly with Excel to allow for much faster wire style generation.  The following is an outline of this process.

If you want to create new wire styles first then simply click the add button in the wire style manager to generate as many default styles wires as you want, these wires will all then be available to edit through the procedure that follows:

1. Select the configurations drop-down menu from the project tab and then select Excel export/import.

2. From here you will need to create a new export/import template. Click New.

3. Once you have clicked new a menu will appear asking for you to name the template, specify the document type and add a description, click next when complete.

4. After clicking next, scroll to the bottom of the objects to export list and select wire style. Once selected you can add and remove fields from the template by checking them on and off via the fields to export menu.  Since we want all fields checked on in this example, complete this step and click finish.

5. Your blank Excel template will open with all the fields that were selected.  Save the template to a location of your choosing and then close it.  We will then export our existing wire style library to this blank template and I will save it as Custom Wire Library.xlsx.

6. When you have closed and saved, return to SOLIDWORKS Electrical and you will see your new blank template in the list menu we began at, close this menu.

7. Go from the project tab to the import/export tab and click on export to Excel.

8. Clicking this tab will launch the Excel export wizard, click on add.

9. This will open up a list of the templates that are available, among this list you will see the Custom Wire Library.xlsx template that we created earlier, check it on and click ok.

10. You will now see it added to the Excel export wizard, click next.

11. Using the selected template, we should now specify a location that the populated template will be saved to and then click finish.
Note: If this location is the same as the location of the blank template then SOLIDWORKS Electrical will warn you that there is already a template of the same name in this location, either choose a different location or opt to
override/overwrite the existing blank template, click finish,

12. Navigate on your computer to the location that you chose to save to and you will see the Custom Wire Library.xlsx, open it with Excel,

13. Modify any of the cells that have now been populated with your existing wire style library and then save the changes once finished, I have done the first row as an example. You may have to bonce back and forward between Excel and the wire style manager in Electrical to figure out what each of the available column values are by assessing the properties of each wire,

14. Once your Excel document is saved, return to SOLIDWORKS Electrical and from the import/export tab select the import from Excel option,

15. Once this option is selected you will enter the Excel import wizard, click add

16. When add is selected you will be able to browse to the location of your saved Custom Wire Library document, select it and open

17. The excel document will be added to the Excel import wizard, click next,

18. You will be shown all areas of the Excel document that were modified, you can scroll through these to review the changes, click next,

19. A final summary screen is presented of the data that has been imported from Excel, click finish,

20. If this prompt appears then (unless you choose otherwise) select the option that I have highlighted,

21. Head back to the project tab and into the configurations drop down menu then into the wire styles manager,

22. Notice the changes to the library have come through from Excel as expected, to review the changes select a modified wire style and select properties,

23. You can clearly see that the modifications made in Excel have been successfully imported back into the SOLIDWORKS electrical wire style manager,

This method makes the modification of wire styles in SOLIDWORKS electrical much more manageable, increases the speed at which you can modify wire style properties and can be carried out at any stage in the design process to update your wire styles, which in turn will propagate through your project.