Insert a proprietary PLC module - AutoCAD Electrical Tutorial

- [Instructor] In the previous video, we set up our demo10.dwg file and we inserted our ladder with the rungs with the increments there starting at 800 going 801, 802, and so on. Quick little bit of housekeeping just before we move any further. If you jump into the Projects panel of the project manager and slide down the slider bar, you'll see that our demo10 drawing is actually in the panel drawings. You just want to make sure that you drag that up and place it just underneath demo07 there like that. Then it's just in the right list in the schematic drawings in the project. Just a little bit of housekeeping, a little bit OCD, but it just means you know where it is for future reference. So what we're going to do now, we're just going to drop a proprietary PLC module into our ladder here and see what happens. That's the whole idea. And the good thing is, because we're using parametric PLC modules, it'll pick up on those rungs of the ladder. So we need to be in the Schematic tab up here in the ribbon, and in the Insert Components panel, if you look over here, you can see you've got various commands. Insert PLC Parametric, and if I come over here, you've got connectors, as well. You want this one. They do look remarkably similar. Just be careful. It's that one there, Insert PLC. Click on the fly-out, and you've got two types, you've got a parametric one and you've got a full units one. A parametric one does it all for you via a dialog box. A full units one basically creates a large PLC module AutoCAD block with lots and lots of attributes. So just for speed, we're going to use the parametric one. So I click on parametric, like so. And what it does now is it'll tell me which proprietary PLCs I've got available. Now, when you install AutoCAD Electrical, you get the option to install different proprietary catalogs of elements like PLCs into your AutoCAD Electrical library in the background. So we've only got a few here, but I'm going to go for something like the Allen-Bradley type there, and I'm going to pick, say, the 1764, and you've got Discrete Combination, and if you expand these out, can you see you've got all different types. This is what I mean by parametric. It's all in there in a catalog and you can bring it in however you please. So I'm going to go for, let's say, a 1762 Analog Combination, like so. And you can see there that there's four points available, so those are your input/output points. So you might want to consider if you want a few more to fill up that 10 rungs of the ladder. Let's go for a MicroLogix L10. And you'll notice now it's got 10 points. That's exactly what we need. So I'm going to go for that one there. If I expand it a bit further, I can go for all different types, and these are all in that Allen-Bradley catalog. So I'm going to go for that one there, like that. It's got 10 points, like so. I can decide on the graphic styles. There's all different styles, as you can see, like so, and these all appear when you insert the PLC module. We want a vertical module. Scale will be one. So I'm going to select it, like so, and I'm going to okay that. As soon as I click on OK, can you see I get, like, a shadow of the actual PLC module, and what I can do now is I can specify a rung of the ladder where I want it to go. So I'm going to go just up towards the middle of the 800 rung there and left click. And what'll happen now is it'll ask for the spacing. Now the good thing is we know that the rung spacing is one, so we'll leave the spacing there as one, as well. Now, you can allow spaces and breaks. I'm not going to do that in this case. But you can break the PLC module into different parts if you want to, as well. So what you can do there is you can now just click on OK, like so, and it'll now ask for the input/output point in the module. So you'll notice, can you see it's adding it to the rungs as you go? So these modules here, I could just click on OK for each one. I'm not going to worry about naming them. But what I can do is I can put a beginning address and an ending address in there, so that's input and output. I is obviously input. O, if it was in front, would be output. So what I can do here is I can actually specify an address if I know it, or I can go for a quick pick. So I can go do I want input, output, or neutral in the middle. I'm going to go for input, like that. Adds it to the beginning address. I click on OK and off it goes. And then you'll notice now there's the output options, as well. So I'll just again quick pick, I'll go for the output, like so, and I'll okay that. Now you'll notice that this is quite a large PLC module I've picked. I've done that deliberately just to show you how large it actually is. So if I roll back on the wheel a little bit, you can see that it goes off the border of the drawing. So all we've got to do there is make sure that we select everything, click, drag a crossing selection over, click again, and just make sure that we move it. So we can just now right click, use the move command, pick a point at the top, and just drag that up a little bit so it fits in the drawing there and click again, and that now nicely fits in the border. I'm just going to zoom in on the top now, and you can see there if I just pan that down a little bit, there's our MicroLogix, there's our L10, and there's AB for Allen-Bradley. So you can see how quick and easy it is just to drop one of those parametric PLC modules into your ladder with your rungs in an AutoCAD Electrical drawing.