Hi Everyone,
  i have just started using AutoCAD2012 Electrical as the company i work for are trying to reduce time in producing electrical circuits and most of all are trying to reduce time in creating cable schedules by importing certain data in to Autodesk applications to create (if possibly) cable schedules.
 
I have used Cad applications for a few years but as i mentioned before am quite new to AutoCAD2012 electrical. I have just finished the Basic online tutorial for AutoCAD 2010 electrical and found it very interesting. The fact that you can determine were a cable comes from and goes to a cetain block which is a component of some kind and that on the block you can specify wire connections for that device, therefore knowing how many cores are used, where the cores come from and go to i would have thought it was possible to create a cable schedule? I.e if i was to create a table in any format, let's say for example excel, and my sub headings match the block names of the devices my cable was coming from and going to and then some sort of cable schedule could be produced. Is this possible at all? or is there something similar out there that can do this?
 
The reason why i ask is that before i start to create any drawings our software engineer creates a I/O Input and Output Schedule database which is made up of variuos columns with lots of information such as , terminal numbers, PLC used, PLC input and output addresses, device names, panel numbers, etc. therefore i was hoping that i could get them to at columns to suite AutoCAD 2012 electrical and then import this data in to AutoCAD and then produce a cable schedule and then from that i create the drawing using the cables defined.
 
 
Thanls for all your help
Adrian.adrian_mcdonnel2011-12-01 13:04:59

I don't know if it is exactly what you are looking for but you might want to take a check out something called the Cable Summary report.  The Report Generator can save to an Excel file format.  The Cable Summary report displays tags of cable marker, sheet number, manufacturer code, catalog, reference number, etc.  There is also a Cable From/To report as well.

I recently saw a demonstration where a spreadsheet of data was brought into AutoCAD Electrical and basically drove the creation of a drawing.  It was pretty amazing.  The rep said all the hard work went into producing the spreadsheet.  After he showed us an example I could see why.  Multiple sheets, tabs and columns.  Made my head hurt.Looking back through my notes I now see that this was referred to as the Spreadsheet to PLC I/O Utility command.  Not sure if this would be of any use to you but it might be in the future.

John Connor2011-12-01 16:13:52

Thanks for the info John, the PLC I/O Utilty sounds interesting, i recall seeing that icon but it was not covered in the basic AutoCAD electrical tutorial. Will certainly look in to this though.
 
Thanks again John.