Placing Electrical Devices

You can place electrical devices from an external system.

Before you begin: Selecting External Systems.
Related Topics
About Importing Electrical Data

  1. Click Manage Links or select Tools > Manage Links... to display the list of external devices to be placed.

    The External Device List appears.



    You can place:


    • Equipments
    • Connectors
    • Splices
    • Shells

  2. To sort Electrical device lists:

    1. Click a column title in order to sort the devices by Linked status, Type, Instance name, etc. in alphabetical order.

      When clicking again the same column title, the list is sorted in the reverse order (ascending / descending, and vice versa).

      When clicking another column, it is sorted in ascending order. The sorting is maintained between two launches of the command.

      Top level items are referred as device assemblies and their content is always listed just under it, as a whole.

    2. Click Harness name: this column displays the Harness name of each device assembly.


      • If the parent device contains sub-devices linked to the same geometry, the name of this geometry is displayed as the name of the parent device.
      • If the parent device contains sub-devices linked to different geometries, the label Several Harnesses appears in the Harness name column and the geometries are displayed where the conflict occurs.


    3. Enter a string of characters in the Harness selection field to filter a specific Harness name (i.e. Harness2) and press Enter.

      If a specific Harness name is chosen, only the devices of this harness are displayed.

      Only the devices linked to the same harness name string will be displayed.

      By default, the field is empty and all devices are displayed.

      The Harness selection is kept between two launches of the command.



    4. Enter a string of characters in the Filter On String field to add a filter on the other columns, and press Enter.

      Only the assemblies containing this characters are displayed.

      The filter is applied to all the columns. A device assembly will be displayed when at least one of its field contains the given string.

      By default, the field is empty and all devices are displayed. The filter string is not kept between two launches of the command.

    Both filters can be used at the same time and also with the assembly sorting through column selection.

  3. Select a device, in our example the equipment.

    The Place button is activated.

  4. To retrieve the device from the database, do the following:

    You can also retrieve the device from a catalog. To do so, make sure that a dedicated catalog exists, then:

    1. Set Data Source to Database or session.
    2. Click Place.

      The Select Devicedialog box opens, ready to launch a query in the database on the device part number:

    3. Click Search.

      All corresponding devices found in the database are listed.

    4. Select the device, then click OK.

    You can also retrieve the device from a catalog. To do so, make sure that a dedicated catalog exists, then:

    1. Set Data Source to Electrical catalog.

      This is the default option.

    2. Click Place.
    3. In the Catalog Browser that opens, browse to find the device of interest.
    4. Click OK when done.

    Note:

    • If no default catalog has been set, click More.. and search for a catalog.
    • In the case of assemblies, you must individually select and position all constituent components.

  5. Place the equipment:

    There are three ways to place devices. You can:

    • Select an existing electrical device in the geometry area. The device is positioned and the two devices are automatically connected.
    • Select a mechanical 3D shape and position using the Robot. See the Using the Robot section of the Infrastructure User's Guide.
    • Press Ctrl and click anywhere in the geometry area to place the equipment at the document origin.

    In our example, the equipment is positioned at the document origin:



    Note: The equipment is an assembly that also comprises four connectors. The assembly is only considered fully placed when all four connectors have been placed.



  6. Assemble associated connectors:

    1. In the External Device List, select each of the four connectors in turn.
    2. Search for and select the corresponding database connector.

    Connectors are automatically placed in the equipment.



    Note: Because information concerning the assembly is contained in the external system, once the corresponding connector is selected from the database, it is automatically positioned in the assembly.

    The external device list is updated: the equipment and connectors are now shown as linked.



  7. Click Close when you are done.