Drawing Multiple Unique Wires in SOLIDWORKS Electrical

SolidProfessor - Sam Sanchez | July 12, 2016 | Comment

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The “Draw Single Wire” command allows users to draw multiple wires at once, but the limitation of that command is that they must all be the same wire type.

In cases where we would like to draw several wires at once, which are unique wires and/or wire styles for each connection, the “Draw Multiple Wires” command must be used. In the tutorial video above, we’ll look at how to use this feature.

From the “Schematic” menu on the ribbon, we’ll click “Draw Multiple Wire.” In the side panel, we’ll click the browse icon to take a look at the wire styles that are available.

Here, we can see all of the wire types that were setup in the wire style manager and stored in the project template for the project.

 

 

In the video tutorial above, we can see there are a selection of individual wires and a handful of “wire groups” set up. These wire groups are what we can use with the Draw Multiple Wire command. Each wire group contains several wire types that are setup, each with their own properties.

In this example, we only need three wires, but this particular wire group has five wires. A neutral, protection and Phase 1, 2, and 3. We’ll click select to use this numbering group.

In the side panel, notice we have checkboxes to choose which of the wires in this wire group to use.

 

 

For this example we’ll just use the Phase 1, 2, and 3 wires, deselecting “Neutral wire” and “Protection,” and we’ll click on the connection point for the two symbols.

When I click on the second symbol the wires are completed, and here I have several wires added, each with their own wire style and properties.

 

 

Now there may be cases where the wire group selected either doesn’t have the exact wire we need or perhaps they are in the wrong order. We’ll learn how to adjust that in another tutorial.

For now, we’ll repeat the command in the tutorial video above to illustrate a couple of options when drawing multiple wires.

First, we will connect the first set set of wires to a second symbol. Notice the software remembers the last settings we used a moment ago so we have the same three wires enabled to add here.

 

 

We can click on either the top of bottom wire to begin this next set of segments, which are connected to their corresponding wires.

As we move the pointer, notice the dash inference lines that appear, which let us know if the segments are lined up with other symbols.

 

 

There are some options in the side panel that we can use to adjust how the wires are drawn, but users will rarely need these.

 

The “Phase” option is what we can use to make the wires cross over one another depending on how the symbol is laid out that we are connecting to, but rather than using the radio button, the spacebar can be used as a keyboard shortcut, which is a nice quick way to toggle back and forth.

The “Draw Bend” option lets us make a U-Turn with the wires, but we could sketch that manually as well. Rather than is the “Draw Non-Ortho” option, we can always just press F8 on the keyboard instead.

You can learn more about SOLIDWORKS Electrical and the new capabilities in SOLIDWORKS 2016 by signing up for a free membership.

 

About the Author

Sam Sanchez is an Applications Engineer with SolidProfessor and a CSWP. Sanchez is an alumni of UC San Diego, and in her free time enjoys 3D printing and hanging out with her dog Ruby. You can see more training videos on a wide range of CAD, CAM & BIM topics at www.solidprofessor.com.