Associate a Symbol with a Plant Item - Intergraph Smart Electrical - Help - Hexagon

The following procedure deals with the association of regular and compound symbols. For nested symbols, see Associate a Nested Symbol with a Plant Item.

You can associate a symbol with a plant item by using one of the following methods:

• Dragging a plant item to a symbol that has already been placed on a drawing.

• Selecting a symbol in the drawing and associating it with a plant item selected in the Find dialog.

Associate a Symbol by Dragging

1. Open a composite drawing and place the required symbols on the drawing. For details, see Place an Item from Catalog Explorer .

2. In the Electrical Index or Electrical Engineer, select an appropriate electrical item.

3. Drag the electrical item to an appropriate symbol in the open composite drawing.

4. After the dragged electrical item is within the boundaries of the drawing, press and hold the CTRL key.

5. Release the mouse button and the CTRL key to make the association.

   

   • You can release the CTRL key once the indicator turns from to , which means that the dragged item is already within the drawing boundaries.

   • The indicator means that no association is possible.

   • The indicator means that an association is possible if you release the mouse button when pointing to a symbol.

   • If you drag a plant item to a symbol that is already associated with a plant item, the indicator appears. If you release the mouse button at this point, a message appears prompting you to choose whether you want to change the association or keep the original one.

Find an Electrical Item and Associate It with a Symbol

1. Select a symbol in the drawing.

2. On the <aProduct> menu bar, select Actions > Associate with Electrical Item . Alternatively, you can also right-click the selected symbol and select Associate with Electrical Item.

3. Use the Find dialog to find the electrical item with which you want to associate the selected symbol.

   On the Find dialog, the equipment type is selected automatically according to the item type of the symbol. For example, if you selected a motor symbol, only Motor is available in the Equipment type list.

4. Select OK on the Find dialog to make the association.

• After selecting a symbol associated with a plant item, the properties of that plant item are displayed in the Properties window. For a compound symbol, expand Select Set to view the plant items associated with the nested symbols.

• You can open the Common Properties of an associated plant item by right-clicking the symbol and then on the shortcut menu, selecting Common Properties. For a compound symbol, this is possible only if the nested symbols are not associated with any plant items. You can select a nested symbol to display the Common Properties of the associated plant item.

• To find the associated plant item in the Electrical Index or Electrical Engineer, right-click the symbol in the composite drawing and then on the shortcut menu click Find in Electrical Index or Find in Electrical Engineer.

After associating a symbol with a plant item, the smart text labels show the property values of the associated plant item as defined in the symbol label. Updating these properties on the same machine where the drawing is currently open automatically updates the smart text labels on the open drawing.
If, for some reason, such a label contains no plant item property value, you can instruct the software to display a specific text indicator that you define in the General Settings of Options Manager. You can, however, leave out the text indicator, if needed. It is always advisable to press F5 to refresh the drawing data after every change that can affect all your plant drawings. See General Settings Window in the Options Manager help.

When associating cables, buses, conductors, segments, and cableways with symbols, it is advisable to associate them with symbols that belong to the connector type. This way you will be able to connect these items on both sides of the connector and design connector paths on the drawing as you require. Connector type symbols are especially useful when designing cable routing. You can select a connector symbol in the Catalog Explorer and immediately start designing the routing by clicking in the appropriate spots on the drawing. You create connector symbols in Catalog Manager. See the Catalog Manager help.