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This topic is currently under development.

 

Cables are typically inserted with a macro - the Cable macro - which inserts both main and help symbols. The main symbol defines the cable type with an index that refers to the Catalogue. Help symbols are primarily synonymous with cable core symbols. However, cable help symbols, which are not cable cores can also exist. A discussion about them is found in the cable help symbol topic.

 

 

The figure above shows the three standard symbols that are used by the cable macro to form standard cable definitions in circuit diagrams.

 

The cable macro is configurable with a configuration file called MAC09.INI, which is located in the symbol library. For example, it is possible to adjust the positions of the attributes, without changing the symbols. However, if you have a need for additional user defined attributes in the cable symbols, the symbols must be replaced. That is also possible to do, using the same configuration file.

 

Creating your own user defined cable symbols from the standard symbols, can therefore be highly useful.

 

Creating cable symbols for other use cases without the cable macro being involved, is also possible.

 

The examples that are presented here, will focus on the most complex case, where you want to adjust the behaviour of the cable macro.

 

We assume the following wish-list:

 

•We want to have 2.5 mm text height for all cable information, instead of the mix between 2.5 and 1.8 mm that is used with the standard configuration.

 

•We want to add a few user defined attributes for additional cable information from the Catalogue:

 

oManufacturer

oType number

oName of algorithm

 

•We want these three attributes to be displayed below the cable type (electrical data) in the cable main symbol.

 

•We also want the cable type to be displayed in the additional cable symbol, together with the three user defined attributes that are listed above.

 

•To accomplish the latter, we will utilise the attribute mirroring feature, so that cable type, manufacturer, type number, and name of algorithm, are mirrored from the main symbol to the additional cable help symbol. How that is done, will be described further down the road.

 

The text height issue will be handled with the configuration file. We will come back to that later.

 

We must decide which attribute names to use for the three additional attributes that will be added. Since the information will be fetched from the Catalogue, we can check the names of the corresponding database fields in the Catalogue, and use them. Not because we must, but because we can. Having multiple names for the same thing in most cases brings confusion, so we want to avoid that.

 

We find the following field names when checking the Catalogue topic:

 

•LIEFERANT (manufacturer, KT database table)

•TYPE (type number, KT database table)

•ALGONAME (name of algorithm, AL database table)

 

Four standard symbols are used by the cable macro. They are described by the table below.

 

 

To fulfil the wishes that were defined above, user defined customised versions of the three first of these must be created. The cable core symbol is however not affected.

 

Not to cause more confusion than necessary, we decide to name our user defined cable symbols similarly to the standard symbols, only replacing the first "L" with an "U".

 

We start by manually inserting the LKABHBT symbol using the INSERT command and typing the symbol name. The symbol is everything but overwhelming. The only thing that we will initially see besides from the item designation, is a slanted light blue line, as shown in the figure below.

 

 

We use the Symbol generator: 3. Edit command to start editing the symbol.

 

 

We adjust the name according to the plan outlined above and then move the attributes so that they are easier to handle than they are originally, as shown in the figure above. To be honest, from start it is almost impossible to distinguish them.

 

 

The figure above shows how the name and the description has been adjusted. The figure below shows how the attributes have been reorganised for better visibility.

 

 

Next step is to add the three additional attributes that we need. An easy way of doing that is to first copy one of the already existing attributes, and then adjust the copies as needed. We choose to copy the ELD attribute three times, and then adjust the names and prompts of the copies.

 

We use the COPY command to copy, and double-click the copies to make the adjustments.

 

 

The figure below shows the result when all three new attributes are in place with their new names.

 

 

We save the new symbol with the Symbol generator: 2. Save command, and then repeat the process for the remaining two symbols. They also need exactly the same modification. The positions of the attributes do not really matter, since the final appearance in the circuit diagrams will be controlled by the MAC09.INI configuration file. Therefore, we can make it easy for ourselves and place the attributes in a more manageable way than in a big pile on top of each other.

 

Please note that the LKABHHBT is a help symbol, which will therefore not be subject to automatic item designation generation, thus being graphically even less impressive when inserted. It will look like shown in the figure below.

 

 

xxx

 

 

xxxx

 

 

xxxx

 

 

When we have went through all this, we will have three new symbols:

 

•UKABHBT

•UKABHBTK

•UKABHHBT

 

The next step is to reconfigure the cable macro to use the three new user defined symbols instead of the ordinary standard symbols. To accomplish that, we open the MAC09.INI configuration file using Notepad. We find that file in the current symbol library (\ELSA\SYMBOLE\IEC1082 or similar).

 

To be continued.