jon928se

Background.

I'm a structural Engineer educated in the days before Autocad, so I learn't to draw with pencil and pen on a drawing board. Over the years I kinda self taught myself the Autocad basics to the stage where I can draw structural stuff from scratch, but that is simple in terms of what Autocad can do and these days with parametric programs we don't "draw" stuff anymore we just tell the computer what to draw. (actually I don't draw stuff I have people do it for me but I do like to know what they are doing)

So in an effort to keep up with the times and use up some more of my free time (SWMBO says I should read rennlist less and drink less) I decided, 928 content, that I would reproduce a 928 wiring diagram in Autocad.

What I want to do is to reproduce the the wire colours say Brown/White on the screen and I'm stumped. Create a custom linetype with the letters Br/Wh in the line no problem. What I want is the line to be coloured Brown with a White stripe. Any acad gurus out there who know the instant answer ? FWIW I'm using ACAD 2007 ( and I hate it compared to 2004 which I know best).

My ultimate goal is to be able separate the electrical functions into different layers on the drawing so that you could for example turn off everything but the wires connected to the headlights. I know how to do this - although I am still thinking about how to do it in a form that doesn't require Autocad. This will require some carefull thought and won't always work as there are bits of wiring that cross "boundaries" from one function to another, but at least if you have a wire that is coloured on a screen view it has to be 10 times better than a black line on an original Porsche badly printed paper manual.

TIA

Mike Frye

That's a cool idea.

I'm afraid I can't help with this question, but here's a bump and a +1 on the idea.

You said you might do it in something else. If you use Acad2007, would people with downlevel versions or who don't have AutoCad be able to use it? (I imagine no to both). Would be a cool tool if there was a way to build an application that had some kind of interface and didn't require the complete AutoCad package to be purchased.

jon928se

Mike

thanks for the +ve reponse.

At the moment I'm thinking that ACAD seems to have the most portable format. I haven't experimented with .dwf which I think (have to check this) allows you to turn off layers in the .dwf file (Free ? viewer for ACAD drawings) which would serve the purpose.

Alternatively it would be no big problem to just turn off layers (Electrical functions in a 928) in the main drawing and then print to pdf. Yes more files but it would achieve the same purpose.

Although I was really thinkin I'ld do this for my own purposes (Unlike Alan I can't carry the 928 wiring diagrams in my head) I had in mind that even if I only get as far as doing the '88 diagrams I'ld distribute freely or send it to Jim M to add to his mega 928 tech repository.

ew928

Not sitting on a CAD machine right now, thank goodness.

But a compound line in Acad might work. You'd set the linestyle up with solid line and a dashed line on top of it.
Question is how are you reproducing the 'white' part of the line. Not sure if there's printers out there that have a white ink component.
Acad at work is set to reproduce the white line/layer as black so we cheat and set the layer to a RGB color with 1% red and 1% green so it's mostly white.

Jon, you'll need to poke around color reproduction houses that print on clear film/mylar and see how they would produce the colour white and then set your file to mimic that.

There's a couple of free PDF creators for Acad, I think, so you can make nice large PDF sheets of the wiring diagram.


Isn't if fun when you're trying to trace the wiring path in the WSM and your eyes get crossed following the black line snaking around the page.

jon928se

Ernest

long time no meet. I'll make it to another frenzy in the US one day.

Compound line ? tell me more (i'll go search the acad help )

ain't white the bit you don't print on white paper ?

ew928

Don't think you want to mess with laying down ink to cover a WHOLE sheet of paper and just tiny little white lines/gaps on the page.
Clear film or mylar would be my weapon of choice. (Why don't my spellchecker know what mylar is?)
Much more durable and probably look nicer than yellowing crinkly paper.

Kempf, who don't come to the forum at all, has been singing praises of the early WSM that have the wiring diagram in color. But then the OB's have what, all of 20 wires in their CIS cars.

I'll have to see what Acad calls the linetype when I get to work.

kaptnknemo

I've allready been doing this for MY 86, but with corel draw instead of autocad. I imported the PDF from Morehouse and just trace colored lines on top. (in a different layer) That way I can blank the PDF layer and just show the HVAC schematic. So far I have only done the HVAC stuff, because my AC doesn't work. I'll send the corel draw file to anyone who wants it.

KK

Mike Frye

KK,

That sounds cool, if you don't mind, I'd like a copy. Should be the same as my '85.

My e-mail is m.r.frye at comcast.net if you get a chance.

dr bob

Jon--

I did a few of the AC pages in AutoCad a few (like 8 or so...) years back, on ACAD2000 IIRC. I didn't try to segrgate layers to get the systems sorted, though. Good idea. I'll take a look at making a compound linetype that shows the correct colors. At the time I looked at it last, I was thinking about how to get the stripes to wrap around the line rather than just dot-dash them into an interlaced pattern. I didn't get far, so I ended up with text embedded as you describe. At the time it was for an audience of one.

If you plan to do a lot of pages, it will be worthwhile building macros to change layers, set linetypes, start and finish your lines. Your macro might place the color code at each end of a line on the chance that it is printed on a mono printer or plotter.

I have 2008 now, lots more features than the 2000 it replaced, but I'm still learning about them. One of those is embedding hyperlinks, so you can jump to another page, something that might be handy when tracing circuits that span pages. The links transit to PDF pages for easy distribution, but don't work that well in the autodesk-supplied free viewers.

Bart

Is it possible in Acad to draw the line as closed poly (like a rectangle) and then insert a hatch of the desired color and design?

The "line" would appear thicker instead of just a 0.0 line weight but I wouldn't think that'd be a bad thing. You could change the size of the rectangle, depending on the gauge of wire.

I'm sure I can do this on my TurboCAD program. I'll give it a try and email you a dfx of it, when I get a second today.

Dean_Fuller

The Easiest way I know...there are many ways, is in AutoCad go to "format" ( menu at top) then "colors" pop up will give you a color range...select what color you want and away you go. You will have to change back of course when your done.

freezzz

Do you have a pdf of the wiring diagram? If so what about converting the pdf to a dxf and then sorting it by layer in autocad. There's a program that lets you do the conversion at www.aidecad.com, and once its a dxf you can save it as a dwg in your autocad program.
Hope I'm not over simplifying it but this might save you a bit of work compared to redrawing everything.

Alan

I'm sorry I think its not such a good idea... There are special tools for schematics that allow you to trace connectivity and add details that you can show or hide and to be able to extract connection lists, highlight between sheets and in some instances even autogenerate new views.

In my opinion it would be much better to invest time in an endeavor like this. Simply duplicating things in autocad adds little value. turning things on & off for clarity is much less useful than hyperlinking between sheet tags or regenerating single page views of just the connectivity you are interested in. Unfortunately - virtually every year is slightly different and would require lots of extra effort - at least to check for differences. Even to implement a single year is an extremely difficult task and there is a very limited ability to verify that you got it correct. So whatever you do its a huge amount of work.

I realize you know Autocad and don't know any schematic editors... however I'd hate to see you invest a huge amount of time in something that probably cannot deliver much more real value than we already have.

The very simplest thing that would be useful in my opinion would be a hyperlinked pdf or jpeg - where clicking on an inter-sheet tag would take you to that tag in the target sheet. I would pay to get that feature and its certainly not an impossible task...

Alan

Alan

Hey - sorry if my reply sounded too negative here...

Another thought. If you are convinced you want to do something with Autocad - don't duplicate the existing drawings - regenerate them in something like the form of the earlier current flow diagrams for individual systems.

e.g. Take all the wiring for just the headlights - all the way from the battery, ignition switch to the lights, then do the same for each major function - many are split between pages. These diagrams are far easier & more focussed. However Porsche's versions failed to define wiring loom and detailed connector assignments which the later diagrams have - combining both would be useful. This endeavour is also useful as soon as you have completed individual diagrams - you don't have to have a complee set for it to have value to you/others.

There is still the issue of differences between years - but again its more manageble to complete all years for headlights or HVAC and still have value without have to achieve 100% conversion.

Looking at rennlist postings its clear that HVAC, Headlights, Bulb Monitoring, Windows etc would be a priority list for many...

Also this would not have any Porsche copyright issues whatever you did...

Alan

69gaugeman

+1,000,000

My 93-95 audi 90 still has wiring diagrams like this.

CE panel on the top, ground on the bottom, then divided into sections for each group of components. Makes a whole lot more sense to me as well.

Why they changed, I will never understand