For all of those of us that do not use spagetti on our electrical drawings, we kind of need this functionality.

So I went and added a list to select the switch leg from. You don’t have to do this, but I thought it might help those that want it all very standardized. If you open stylemanager from the MANAGE ribbon tab you will find the Multi-Purpose Ojbects folder. There is an item called List Definitions. Right click on that and hit NEW. I named mine SwitchLegs. On the APPLIES TO tab I checked the Manual Property check box. On the ITEMS tab I checked the “Allow individual property values to vary from this list” check box (that is up to you). I added items “a” through “z” omitting a few that we don’t use here such as “e” “l” and “o”. “l” looks to much like a 1 and “o” looks like a zero, so the cct 3″o” might look like 30 depending on the font. We don’t use “e” because we sometimes use E13 to designate emergency circuit numbers, and 13e might confuse some people. Anyway, on to the next step.

Next under “Documentation Objects” in the stylemanager we need to select Property Set Definitions. I chose to add to the DeviceObject instead of creating my own. I went to the defition tab for the DeviceObject and selected the “Add Manual Property Definition” button. I named it SwitchLeg and hit OK.  I changed the Type for my new property to LIST. I selected teh “switchlegs” list I created earlier. I changed the format to Unformatted.

I then added a Formula Property Definition which I named CCTLeg. I doubleclicked on CircuitNumber in the “Insert Property Definitions” box. Then I doubleclicked on SwitchLeg in the  ”Insert Property Definitions” box.  Then hit the OK button.

Hit OK.

Type BE at the command prompt. Select the Aecb_Circuit_Number_G block. In block editor Save Block as THEM_CCT_Leg (obviously you can name it whatever you like).  Change the attdef to have a tag of DEVICEOBJECT:CCTLEG prompt “CircuitLeg?” Default 3a. Save and close block editor.

Back to the Multi-Purpose Ojbects folder in StyleManager. Go to Multi-View Block Definitions. Right click on Aecb_Device_Circuit_Tag (if this is not in the drawing, clost out of stylemanager and insert a device tag from the elec tool pallete). Select copy. Right click on the Multi-View Block Definitions, select paste. I named mine THEM_Device_Circuit_Tag_SwitchLeg. Nothing like a nice short name. Click on the one you just selected and select the “View Blocks” tab. Add the THEM_CCT_Leg tot he View Blocks box for the General Display Representations. Remove the Aecb_Circuit_Number_G block from the box. Hit OK.

In Autocad you can add a device tag to a luminaire. Then click on the newly placed device tag and go to the properties dialog box. Change the definition (Under Design Tab, General Section) to THEM_Device_Circuit_Tag_SwitchLeg

Go to extended data and you should see a manual property for the switch leg. Change it to the letter you like. The cct should say 3a now, assuming you have the lighting fixture on cct 3. Otherwise if it is not yet cct’ed it will say NAa.

Hopefully that is complete and accurate so next time I have to do it, it will be easier.

I hope to add screen shots in the future.

You have to give write permissions in the registry to the user for this location HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Autodesk\AutoCAD\R17.1\ACAD-####:###\Applications\

Then once you have set the permissions and you go to the config settings dialog and select  AUTOLOAD – ON AUTOCAD STARTUP and hit OK, then close Autocad and restart and it will load iDwgTabs automatically. If you previously had it in the startup suite, you can remove it from there.

Next on the agenda is to get some English documentation. Hope this helps any other Vista users.

I right clicked on bizicom, and selected permissions. I gave the user full control of the BizIcom folder (which also did the subfolders).

I am now able to save the changes in the “Config Settings” area and have them stick when using the interface to make changes.

Autoload setting is still not working tho. I am guessing it has to write to the registry in a different location and still does not have permission.

Also, the “Config Settings” window still pops up when loaded. I am guessing there is a “run first time” setting in the registry that has not been able to be written to yet that is causing this problem. If there are any winXP users out there that can tell me where this registry setting is, I would appreciate it.

First, they have an option to Autoload on Autocad Startup. This option does not seem to work. I can get it to Autoload only by putting it in the startup suite.

I also cannot get the options to stick by using the “Config Setting” option. The changes will be retained while you have Autocad open. Once you close and reopen, you lose your settings. I have found a way around this by editing the registry. Below is a list of the registry settings. All are the default, except  “onetabhidden”=dword:00000000 which I changed to 0 from 1. I wanted the tabs to show up no matter how many drawings I had opened. That way the view does not change when you go from more than one drawings open to one drawing open.

The last thing is that the program always brings the config settings dialog up when I load the program. I assume this is a Vista issue (seems like it can’t read registry properly or something) , so maybe some XP users could let me know if this is actually how it is suppose to work.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\BizIcom]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\BizIcom\iDwgTab]
“CurVer”=”1.0.3.72″

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\BizIcom\iDwgTab\1.0.3.72]
“tool_path”=”C:\\cad\\IDwgTabs\\”
“onetabhidden”=dword:00000000
“tabicon”=dword:00000001
“tabvericon”=dword:00000001
“tabext”=dword:00000001
“tabfixwidth”=dword:00000001
“tabopensort”=dword:00000001
“docking”=dword:00002000
“zoomext”=dword:00000000
“onlymodify”=dword:00000000
“recentfileopen”=dword:00000000
“tooltip”=dword:00000001
“popup_offset_y”=”20″
“seltextcolor”=dword:00800000
“unseltextcolor”=dword:00808080
“startbgcolor”=dword:00f0f0f0
“midbgcolor”=dword:00f0f0f0
“endbgcolor”=dword:008e8e8e
“bgeffect”=dword:00000002
“usedlg_ctrltab”=dword:00000001