
This process is inefficient and can lead to errors where the revision of the drawing and PDF are not the same. Making your drawing properties accurate to your company standards will update the drawings per the company standards since AutoCAD Electrical uses the drawing properties when running these tools.Most CAD users will be following the process of creating the PDF, adding the PDF to Vault and potentiality associating the PDF to the relevant drawing. If you know about these tools, but are not running them because you think it is messing your drawings up you need to review the drawing properties. If you are not running these tools because you didn’t know about them it will clear up many of drawing issues you were experiencing, and reduce your frustration you were most likely having with AutoCAD Electrical. If you want to run all three of these tools at once on one or more drawings of the project you should use the Project-Wide Update/Retag tool located on the Project ribbon, and in the project manager. Here are the icons located on the Schematic ribbon: If the wire numbers are not displayed, or wrong, you need to run the Wire Numbers tool. If a cross reference like a source/destination is not correct you need to run the Component Cross-Reference tool. For example, if a symbol is not displaying the correct tag information you will need to run the Retag Components tool.


Which tool you run depends on what you need to update, or what is displaying incorrect information. They are all located on the Schematic ribbon. Retag Components, Component Cross-Reference, and Wire Numbers are the minimum tools you need to run on a regular basis. The following tools listed are the minimum updates you should perform.

Sometimes the order, or the task, will matter depending on what you are doing. This will allow you to see things that need to be addressed before releasing the drawings to production.

The order you run them is not as important as making sure you run them on a regular basis. Since AutoCAD Electrical ships with tools specifically designed for the controls industry it is important you keep your project files updated to ensure they are accurate at all times. Posted on Jby Synergis Application Consultant, Todd Schmoock
