Working with drawings

After you have started Electrical discipline by opening your DGN, you need to Load Electrical to proceed with using your drawing for intended Electrical discipline purpose.

Next, Register Current Design File using (Register File).

Note: This is a pre-requisite for all Electrical discipline drawings to register the file in order to creates a Project Database to help record symbols to Electrical database.

Database Settings

Access

(Project Database) to setup the database. Select the settings as shown below.

This will stop Electrical discipline from automatically saving the database or open a dialog for saving confirmation, which might find disruptive.

Note: To update the database, you will then need update location information using

(Update Symbol Location Data).

Design File setup

Then do the Design File Setup using (File Setup).

Electrical discipline requires basic settings when working with drawings.

Symbols section

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Select symbol library for your drawing/project.

Note: Electrical discipline works with one Symbol Library for each project.

Select your scale factor for symbols that are not drawn in real world measurements like sockets, switches etc and your Standard Text size for Electrical functions. You can also activate the rotation of symbols after they are inserted in your drawing (default = off). Cycle Symbol Dialog enables that certain Electrical discipline functions automatically repeat themselves (default = on).
Building Structure section

Electrical discipline requires the set up of a Building Structure. How to set up such a structure is explained in detail in Creating a Building Structure. Open the Building Manager / Classification dialog by clicking . Enter room shapes online allows for creating room shapes while you are working in a drawing (default = on).
3D section

Enter Ceiling Height and Floor Level for your drawing.
Note: You can only enter one Ceiling Height and Floor Level for Electrical discipline drawings.

Select if you want to work in 2D, 3D or in 2D and 3D mode. In the Collision Detection section, activate/deactivate Clearance 1 and 2.

Click OK to save your Drawing Setup options.

Room Shapes

After you created a Building Structure, you will need to create Room Shapes in the Building Manager using ( Building Properties). This is described in detail in Creating Room Shapes.

Electrical discipline can also automatically import Bentley Architectural Room Shapes.