A moment shall come when you will require to register a new component in your library, in order to finish a project. You may have noticed that the components from the standard library have more than one representation to the same component. For example, there are circuit breakers with a schematic representation.
Each representation will show something on the drawing. In the case of the schematic, it will have attributes and info that shall affect the behavior of the component in the electrical schematic. In this article, we are going to see which options should be linked to the component representation.
Access the representation tab (Drawing)
Right-click component name at the components palette;
Select Library properties...
Click Next to access the drawing tab;
Here it must be defined the blocks that will be used to each one of the components representations. There is 4 options to associate the block.
Import Button
With this option, it is possible to select a DWG file with the complete representation of the block. This block could be located in any directory, flash drive, server or download folder.
This block entities will be copied and a new block will be registered at the database, with the same setting, but with a singular name. In practice, it makes a copy of the block for you to work with.
It is important to click on “Edit” after selecting your representation, because we have to make sure that this DWG file has no other layers that could spoil the component behavior. It is also relevant that we adjust the drawing by removing any useless lines that might have been in the DWG file.
“Copy from...” button
This option allows to use the same representation from another existing component.
In practice, you can use the option “Copy from…” in case you have a standard representation of a contactor, for example, and then use this same drawing of a component that you already have at your library.
New/Edit button
This option gives access to all drawing tools, so that representation can be created manually by the user.
Advanced button
This feature applies the same DWG file from your computer to be used as component representation. In practice, this means that all modifications you made outside the component creation/modification tab will be applied for all components that are using this DWG file setted using advanced button.
⚠️WARNING: These 3 options of representations creation "Import...", "Copy from..." and "Edit..." automatically creates new blocks files (dwg) in to database folders. The "advanced..." option applies the same DWG file to components representations without creating new ones.