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Automation Technologies 2/2016

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Automation Technologies 2/2016

Integrated electrical

Integrated electrical engineering solution - fast, efficient, affordable Thomas Walker Engineers who design complex machines, plants and buildings appreciate efficient planning tools, especially when a lot of technical information is needed in other disciplines and processes such as manufacturing or programming, for example. An integrative engineering software suite such as Wscad is efficient and provides a real competitive edge. Author: Thomas Walker, Managing Director, walkerbretting Corporate Publishing GmbH, Stuttgart, Germany The reasons why the Suite is very popular with professionals are obvious: The creation of I&C plant schematics, piping and instrumentation diagrams or fluid and circuit diagrams are easily and effortlessly accomplished with Wscad. The coil of a hydraulic or pneumatic valve in the circuit diagram is the same as in the fluid plan or in the cabinet layout. The symbols and part data come from the supplied extensive database and are linked together in all plans. Those who don’t always want to work with a large part database can create individual or project-related data pools, which include exactly the products approved for the project by the client. Those looking for more part data and symbols have a good chance of finding them in wscaduniverse.com. In the data portal at the same web address, there are over one million parts and related data from over 115 different manufacturers in both Wscad and Eplan formats. Including quick search and filter functions, and, above all, absolutely free. For all Eplan users who do not have a maintenance contract, this is a more than interesting alternative. You can simply call up the site directly from the application or register online, filter, find and use parts in your own plans. Even for manufacturers, it is well worth setting up their product data in both E-CAD formats: the setting is free and enables them to effectively reach more than 125,000 users worldwide. COMPONENTS AND SOFTWARE About Wscad The German company offers software-based engineering solutions that help small and medium businesses and enterprises accelerate their product development process improving or exceeding the required quality. Wscad is part of the Buhl Data Group, an owner-managed German software vendor with over 650 employees. An international world-wide network of resellers service 35,000 customers. AUTOMATION TECHNOLOGIES 2/2016

01 Six disciplines enable seamlessly integrated electrical engineering - from I&C plant schematics, piping & instrumentation, fluid and circuit diagrams down to electrical installation plans and cabinet layout CAD systems and merges them into the format needed for Wscad. A comparison with the WSCAD database avoids redundancies, and all technical data such as terminal strips or the dimensions of the components are available immediately. Extensive automation for efficient planning Six disciplines are fused together The ever-increasing availability of finished and tested part data is, however, just one of the advantages of the solution. Six disciplines fused together in a core make it possible to plan complex facilities and systems and to automate building. The software supports the entire design and documentation process - ranging from charts with intelligent measuring points from process engineering, across circuit diagrams, pneumatic and hydraulic fluid technology plans, down to the cabinet configuration and electrical installation plans. Even the complete building automation and electrical installation planning are on board. By clicking on a symbol, you can easily switch from one plan to another. This also applies to the subsequently generated documentation, in the form of smart PDFs, for example. By clicking on a valve in the fluid plan, service technicians on site can immediately switch to the circuit diagram or the control cabinet. Since you can draw very quickly and easily with the Wscad software, it is also ideal for prototyping. The advantages of the logical connections of the components with one another and to other plans can be exploited from the outset. For example, with the automatic assignment of tube designation in fluid technology or cable designation in the circuit diagram, from where the cable lists in the electrical installation and the material and order lists can be derived. Based on the automatically generated material lists and a link to the company’s ERP system, current cost estimates and price overviews can be obtained quickly and at a very early stage. The basis for rapidly creating plant and other schematics or cabinet assembly plans are prefabricated or individually created macros and macro variants for recurrent partial plans. It is really easy to create your own macros: simply draw a circuit diagram, drag a window with the mouse over the desired part of the plan, assign a name and save it. This partial plan can then be immediately used any number of times. The macro function is supported in all disciplines of the Wscad Suite. A special feature is the Project Wizard, which is available as an Add-On: it composes macros and their for complete plans across multiple plan pages, as if guided by a magic hand! The new automation interface goes one step further: this interface allows freely-selectable and Wscad-independent product configurators to instruct the software to create plans and the entire documentation. This process runs as a background process in “silent mode” without any user interaction. Planning work that would otherwise take weeks or days is thus shortened to a few minutes. So suddenly there is more time to engineer new products and for strategically important issues. One of the tangible benefits of this solution is, of course, also its reasonable purchase price and the cost of annual maintenance. In a direct comparison with other solutions on the market, the cost for almost identical functionality works out to far less than half, and sometimes even just a quarter of that of competing products. Given tight project budgets, this is certainly a great help. Despite the increased and constantly expanding range of functions, the program runs faster than ever before. Thanks to the inexpensive entry-level version, companies, suppliers and the self-employed can consistently plan, design and construct with one and the same software. Photographs: WSCAD electronic GmbH www.wscad.com Manufacturing integration and external data import All data generated in Wscad is available for manufacturing by pressing a button. For example, for the production of ready-to-install cable bundles, the single or serial production of wires or label printing. On NC machining centers, mounting plates and cabinet doors for switch cabinets can be produced with the data. Those who receive data from other third-party E-CAD systems can continue processing this immediately by using the “Import E-CAD Material” function. An import wizard reads the terminal charts, material and connection lists, etc., that were previously exported from other E- 02 With the automation interface, it is now possible to automatically generate plans with the Wscad software via freely-selectable external configurators AUTOMATION TECHNOLOGIES 2/2016

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