CDA – EPLAN – Electric P8

25 August 2017

EPLAN Electric P8 offers engineers a CAE software solution that automates the most time consuming electrical design tasks, providing a complete solution for the planning, documentation and control of electrical automation projects.

Complex electrical systems can appear to be pretty incomprehensible and demand detailed scrutiny to follow schematic diagrams and the routing of each of the various channels in a wiring diagram. Spare a thought, therefore, to those charged with assembling such a project portfolio, where every last component and connection has to be guaranteed to be correct. Fortunately, the process can be largely automated and simplified – using solutions like EPLAN Electric P8.

What is EPLAN Electric P8?

EPLAN Electric P8 works as a project portfolio (or document) that contains all the relevant information about a particular electrical design project, including schematic diagrams, product documentation, such as manuals and reports and graphical representations. The software is proven to increase a company’s productivity levels by as much as 70% through the automation of time consuming tasks such as wire numbering, device tagging, cross referencing, error checking and report generation.

One of the biggest advantages of using EPLAN Electric P8 is the amount of time the software saves by simplifying tasks throughout the design process. Unlike traditional CAD systems with regards to how a project is stored, in EPLAN Electric P8 it is saved as a single product file, rather than individual documents, creating an immediate advantage for users.

By storing a project in this format, the need for engineers to spend hours on time consuming and tedious tasks that could delay a project, and in turn increase project delivery times is removed. Below are two common scenarios that demonstrate the time efficiencies that EPLAN Electric P8 CAE software provides over CAD systems.

Scenario 1: Inserting pages into a project

The advantages of using EPLAN Electric P8 are probably better explained by looking at a couple of different scenarios, where considerable time can be saved by automating much of the process. In the first, a customer requests 4 new pages to be added into a 150 page project document. Using a generic CAD tool this would usually take an average of 120 hours, as each page, device and wire would have to be renumbered with the new page prefix, and all cross references updated. With EPLAN Electric P8, pages can be inserted quickly and easily, with no need to update cross references, as they are updated in the project automatically. Devices and wires can then be renumbered automatically.

Time taken:

CAD tool

120 hours

EPLAN

1 hour

SAVINGS

119 (99% reduction in time)

Scenario 2: Printing a Project

The second scenario considers the production of a 150 page project that requires printing.  With a generic CAD tool each page would need to be opened and printed individually. This could take on average 2 minutes per page. With EPLAN Electric P8, the entire project would be printed in one operation.

Time taken:

CAD tool

5 hours

EPLAN

0.016 minutes

SAVINGS

4.9 Hours (98.7% reduction in time)

Creating detailed schematics

Detailed schematics can be easily created with EPLAN Electric P8. EPLAN can either be used to design electrical layouts from scratch, or to build them up from a pre-drawn library of macros. The software allows users to drag and drop components or symbols straight into a page and automatically connect them, using the intelligence that comes with each component to make appropriate connections (each component that a user chooses has intelligent data attached to it). Inserting components or symbols, besides importing their attributes, also initiates a logical numbering sequence, locating them precisely in the project or diagram.

Being able to navigate with ease to the particulars of a project, rather than having to look through many pages of a document, or open up a number of files in separate applications, saves a considerable amount of time and effort. It also eliminates the probability of errors being included through the migration and translation of data between different programmes that may also be in different formats.

For more information, please Click Here