Managing complex components with multiple symbols and representations can be a challenging task in any design environment. The complexity is magnified in the hydro industry with devices like IEDs especially with design tools not really built with any electrical intelligence.
E3 is right at home when it comes to these complex device structures. The ability to track every symbol and eliminate unwanted duplication helps reduce the errors and time consumed in correcting them by helping you do it right the first time.
Here’s an example of an IED in E3 showing the simplicity of component management.
Even though Elementary wiring Diagrams and Connection Wiring Diagrams share the electrical information in a project and they are just different views of the same device we spend double engineering time than we should.
You can create the EWD and get CWD done automatically, that right there saves you all the time you spend in creating CWDs!!
Food for thought :How long does it take to create CWDs?
See how we are automating the CWD creation without any extra effort.
The User Interface is a very important factor in determining productivity in a design environment.
E3 gives you a truly personalized and intelligent design environment to be able to create those designs without the clutter and the frustrations that come along with a rigid User Interface.
Eliminating these frustrations can lead to increased productivity and reduce your design time.
Learn how you can make your designs and your day better with E3.
We are all so used to using keyboard shortcuts while working and designing. They do tend to increase productivity and ease of use in a design environment. Most options in E3 are readily available on right mouse click or on the toolbars, but if you are like me keyboard shortcuts are a must. In E3 your normal windows shortcuts are already a part of the software (Ctrl + C for copy, Ctrl + V for paste).
E3 Customize Menu
In addition to that you can create your own shortcuts for any command that you would like. The interface for creating these is pretty nifty as well. Under Tools-> Customize you will find a lot of customization options one of them being Keyboard shortcuts. You can assign the desired keyboard shortcut by choosing the command and choosing the key or combination of keys. It also tells you if it is the shortcut you have chosen is already assigned or is free to be assigned to the desired command.
Using these and other time saving techniques goes a long way in making an already fast design environment faster!!
Here is a list of some of the more common Shortcuts/Hotkeys:
E3.WireWorks is a very efficient design environment in itself. A do it all design environment with all parts of your design up-to-date automatically not only reduces inefficiencies but also errors reducing the need for rework. Having intelligent software to work with is the first step to success, but the question is how can you get the maximum output from this amazing design tool?
Javelin Technologies is aiming high with the creativity of coop students. Our electrical engineering coop Rami Eisawy, from Waterloo University, has just completed some fantastic work to help our client base by working on E3 library content; plus as a special project Rami figured out how to use Microsoft Kinect as an interface for E3.WireWorks. It only took him a few hours to map some of the Kinect interactive controls to E3.WireWorks interface tools. E3.WireWorks software has some similarities to AutoCAD Electrical, but is designed from the ground up for electrical design and has countless advantages.
Microsoft Kinect Sensor
It is of course a proof of concept at this point, but I am looking forward to the day that electrical design can be carried out in a virtual environment and gestures can be used to easily piece together a new design and document how it should be wired up. Have a look at the video below to see some of the interaction take place. Please share your comments or suggestions to help future Javelin coop students to take the concept further.
The power generation and distribution industry is evolving to meet the current needs and they are focusing on smarter systems and smarter designs. Working with the industry giants has been a great experience, providing us with some insight as to how we can go about improving our design process.
Asking the right questions increases the chances of getting the right answer. So, what are the right questions?
1. How can I achieve greater design efficiency?
Having a list of components that you use regularly can go a long way
You can test the performance of the components and introduce some standardization. This in turn not only reduces the cost of design but also gives you more consistency in terms of quality.
2. How can I automate tasks ?
Automating tasks requires you to have a good design tool. Tools like E3 help you automate different parts of the design process completely or partially as needed.
Reports are a great area to automate as well. Particularly reports that can improve manufacturing, and in turn reduce the maintenance time and cost drastically.
Intelligent systems like E3 help you produce these with a click of a button without errors.
3. How can I reuse parts of my design efficiently?
Design reuse ensures quality and standardization.
Having the ability to reuse the same section in a project but keeping it unique with device numbering, wire numbering or just cable details can be difficult. E3 takes care of these things automatically, so you can reuse your protective circuits again and E3 will also ensure you don’t have 2 fuses called F1!!
4. How can I keep the information accurate throughout the project?
Accuracy breeds quality. The more accurate and detailed your design is the better results you achieve with the product life cycle.
This is a common challenge when you are working on a project that has multiple views of the same electrical information. Thankfully E3 understands this and keeps all the views of the component synced together so you don’t have to manually find the areas to make the changes.
5. How can I make changes without introducing errors?
It can be difficult to keep track of changes in the design and make sure you replicate those changes in all parts of the design. However, it is essential to do so.
You are on a slippery slope once errors are introduced into your design and go unnoticed; the problem is cimpounded every time you make changes.
E3 provides multiple levels of design rule checks to maintain the integrity of your design. Additionally all aspects of your designs are automatically kept up to date drastically reducing the possibility of making errors.
Using the right tool for the right job is very important in maintaining efficiencies. If you want to compete in Formula 1 Racing — a bicycle is not the answer!!
Learn more – Join our webinar ”Electrical Design for Power Distribution and Generation”
E3.WireWorks has been having a very positive impact on our clients, but just because the design team wants the tools, does not mean they can convince the ones that hold the purse strings to invest in it. To justify the E3.WireWorks investment it is important to identify 1-3 areas where there will be a measurable return. With the work that I have been doing with our clients over the last few years with E3, I have identified 5 top areas where a good return is possible.
1) Product development time shortened
A typical product development cycle for electrical engineering has a great deal of time spent on schematics and an equal or greater amount of time spent detailing panel layouts, cable or harness plans, and generating reports like bill of materials. E3.Series and E3.WireWorks have the capability of greatly reducing this product development cycle by streamlining original schematic creation, partially automating panel and cable layouts and completely automating reports. The graphic below shows how the typical design process may change.
Even more important than the time savings of the original design is the time savings of design changes. With all electrical design fully associative, design changes will automatically propogate which avoids the extra time spent updating information in all appropriate places.
2) Manufacturing is easier
With drawing packages being done in E3.WireWorks, manufacturing will be more streamlined than ever. The extra detail makes it a breeze to interpret and there are a variety of ways to consume the documentation electronically such as the intelligent PDF’s with hyperlinks between references. You can even take it as far as building step by step instructions for panel building with the combination of wire reports and the E3 Viewer. This video shows some of the ways to build from E3.WireWorks:
3) Common costly errors are avoided
Errors creeping into designs can be more than a nuisance – it can lead to many wasted hours of corrections, unnecessary communication and ordering of materials. If the errors make it through the manufacturing stages and into the field, there are even more costs related to making fixes out in the field. E3.WireWorks plays a significant role in reducing the amount of errors that make it into the drawing package. By keeping devices and wires organized and unique, it makes it easy to copy, update and reuse drawings without forgetting to do rename and make repetitive changes to multiple drawings and reports. There are even online design rule checks that catch miswiring signals together, catching loops or in some cases performing online circuit calculations.
4) Get the information you need, when you need it
There is a lot of benefit to a company to get the information you need when you need it. If high lead time items need to be ordered from an early bill of materials or milestones of work need to be shared with clients, it can be very advantageous to have a tool in place that avoids unnecessary work to hit your intermediate goals. Even more significant is being able to leverage the work that has been done to speed up the remaining design steps. WireWorks has allowed our customers to achieve this by keeping the entire electrical design associative on an electrical engineering database. You can literally start anywhere in your design process and fill in the blanks elsewhere later on.
Here is a quick list of steps that can easily be the first on your list:
Bill of Materials
Detailed schematic
Single line schematic
Panel layout
Cable interconnects
Hydraulic or process schematics
Tag lists
Location and hierarchy planning
5) Sales boosted by increased competitiveness and quality
Up until this point I have been focusing on reducing cash flow out of the business. This is great, but many companies have been seeing a large benefit to the cash flow coming into the business as well. With higher quality deliverables and incredibly quick turnaround times, customer relationships and margins have improved. Both of these have lead to more dollars and cents in your pocket by increasing loyalty and winning more contracts.
Many clients are looking for further integration between SolidWorks piping and process design and the schematics that dictate them. In SolidWorks 2010, P&ID import was introduced but there was no clear contendor at creating the appropriate XML file. This has changed over the last couple years because E3 has done the appropriate development to create the XML and integrate the two together. At SolidWorks World in San Diego this year I have decided to put together a detailed presentation on how to do this integration. Here is the presentation details:
P&ID – A New Design Flow for Piping – Eric van Essen, Javelin Technologies
E3.WireWorks intelligent schematics can be set up to quickly map out P&ID diagrams, which can be used as the driving force for P&ID imports in the SolidWorks routing module. This presentation will talk about the details required to set up the solution and make it work to drive your pipe routing.
P&ID Event is on Wednesday, February 15, 2012, 10:30 AM, at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California, USA
If you are able to make your way down to the conference, it would be great if you could come by and attend my session. Visit the following link for the SolidWorks World agenda, list of exhibitors, justification letter, and more: http://www.solidworks.com/sww
Not so long ago Steve Chidester from Zuken hs written a pretty good blog about the Top 5 benefits of up front planning in Electrical Design. I probably should have followed that advice with my holiday shopping but that is a story for some other day.
In this computer world — actually forget computer in this TABLET world people are still making their electrical designs on paper or the basic old archaic cad systems. More and more people are realising though that it is very difficult to make design decisions worth more than my house based on guess work and incomplete data.
Is there a way out ?? Yes there is — E3 a complete design environment from project concept, to planning and design.
In Fact…You can perform functional and topology design in the same design tool as you do all your main electrical design with E³.series (*whispers* – and that’s an area where we are different than many of the electrical CAD software kids on the block).
So what are the benefits and what is possible with E3?
1.Do your upfront planning in a tool that is designed for you with specific functions for electrical engineers
2.Make early calculations like cable length based on real data
3.Feed the early planning data directly into the detailed design without redrawing or re-inputting
4.Work out the connections between functions and how they are going to work together
5.Use one tool – learn one set of skills. Make life simple (it’s hard enough as it is)
If this has peeked your interest feel free to get in touch and we can discuss the soluton in detail.
