Autodesk AutoCAD Electrical 2011

AutoCAD Electrical is AutoCAD software for controls designers, purpose-built to create and modify electrical control systems. It contains all the functionality of AutoCAD, the world’s leading CAD software, plus a comprehensive set of tools for automating control engineering tasks, such as building circuits, numbering wires, and creating bills of material. AutoCAD Electrical provides a library of more than 650,000 electrical symbols and components, includes real-time error checking, and enables electrical and mechanical teams to collaborate on digital prototypes built with Autodesk Inventor software. AutoCAD Electrical offers control engineers a competitive edge by helping save hours of effort, so they can spend more time innovating.

What’s New in AutoCAD Electrical 2011:

Productivity Enhancements: AutoCAD Electrical 2011 offers controls designers immediate productivity gains with a set of enhanced features and tools designed to help create accurate electrical control systems in less time.

Catalog Lookup: AutoCAD Electrical 2011 makes significant improvements to the catalog lookup process. Database performance enhancements enable dramatically faster loading times. Users now have instant access to the extensive component catalog, where improved filtering and sorting make it quick and easy to find the exact component needed.

Import Wire Types: AutoCAD Electrical 2011 enables users to easily reuse frequently specified wire types. Users can now import wire types from an existing drawing or template into another drawing.

Item Numbering: Item numbering now supports fixed item numbers on panel components. Fixed item numbers do not change when the Resequence Item Numbers command is run.

Location Boxes: Enhancements to the Location Box functionality make it easy to identify locations for a device or group of devices, resulting in more accurate panel layouts. When inserting a Location Box, a checkbox on the Location Box dialog box indicates whether to update the Location and Installation values for parent components that fall within the new location box.

Suppress Wire Collision Check: AutoCAD Electrical 2011 makes wiring components into designs faster by enabling users to turn Wire Collision on or off with a single click of the mouse. Default behavior routes around a component when routing a wire from one location to another.

Ease of Use Enhancements: Enhancements to the help system, data migration tools, and catalog sharing make AutoCAD Electrical 2011 easier than ever to learn and use.

Improved Learning Experience: AutoCAD Electrical 2011 introduces new in-product learning tools and tutorials designed to help users take advantage of the advanced functionality in AutoCAD Electrical and realize immediate productivity gains:

• Getting Started exercises added to the help section
• The new Title Block tutorial guides AutoCAD Electrical 2011 users through the steps of creating a template, creating a title block, and defining the title block mapping for a title block update.
• The new Cable Design Interoperability tutorial explores the mechatronic capabilities of Digital Prototyping, demonstrating the seamless interoperability between AutoCAD Electrical and Autodesk Inventor, and includes exercises in both environments.

promis•e Data Migration: Users of promis•e® software can avoid hours of rework by easily migrating designs into AutoCAD Electrical design software using the promis•e data migration tool. AutoCAD Electrical 2011 enhances this powerful tool to simplify and accelerate the data migration process.

Project-Specific Catalog Database: AutoCAD Electrical 2011 users can now create a project-specific catalog database by including just the relevant portion of the catalog database that was used for the project. This command starts with the default_cat.mdb database and removes all catalog values not used in the project drawings.

System requirements:

For 32-bit AutoCAD Electrical

• Microsoft® Windows® XP Home and Professional (SP2 or later), or Microsoft® Windows Vista® (SP1 or later) Enterprise, Business, Ultimate, and Home Premium editions, or Microsoft® Windows® 7 Enterprise, Business, Ultimate, and Home Premium editions (compare Windows versions)
• Intel® Pentium® or AMD Athlon® dual-core processor, 1.6 GHz or higher with SSE2 technology for Windows XP, or Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD Athlon dual-core, 3.0 GHz or higher with SSE2 technology for Windows Vista or Windows 7
• 2 GB RAM
• 4 GB free disk space for installation (5 GB for a clean machine with no .NET installed)
• 1,280 x 1,024 display with True Color
• Microsoft® Internet Explorer® 7.0 or later
• Microsoft Mouse-compliant pointing device

For 64-bit AutoCAD Electrical

• Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition (SP2 and later), or Microsoft Windows Vista (SP1 or later) Enterprise, Business, Ultimate, and Home Premium editions, or Microsoft® Windows® 7 Enterprise, Business, Ultimate, and Home Premium editions (compare Windows versions)
• AMD Athlon with SSE2 technology, AMD Opteron® with SSE2 technology, Intel® Xeon® with Intel EM64T support with SSE2 technology, or Intel Pentium 4 with Intel EM64T support with SSE2 technology
• 2 GB RAM
• 4.5 GB free disk space for installation (5 GB for a clean system with no .NET installed)
• 1,280 x 1,024 display with True Color
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 or later
• Microsoft Mouse-compliant point device

Additional Requirements for 3D Modeling

• Intel Pentium 4 processor or AMD Athlon, 3 GHz or greater, or Intel or AMD dual-core processor, 2 GHz or greater
• 2 GB RAM or greater
• 2 GB free hard disk available, not including installation
• 1,280 x 1,024 32-bit color video display adapter (True Color) 128 MB or greater, Direct3D®-capable workstation-class graphics card