Friday January 30, 2015 at 2:38pm
Simple tips for creating and using Black Boxes in SOLIDWORKS Electrical.
Black boxes in SOLIDWORKS Electrical schematics are a very simple
and easy to use. A Black box is a generic schematic symbol which can be
used to represent any device or apparatus, this can act as a time saving feature.
Not only this but it can also be used as a space saver, when an engineer knows
that a symbol needs to placed but is unsure which one will be needed.
Default Black boxes (or straight out of the box if you
will!) can be used to perform this task. They can be drawn over a number of
wires, accepted and all the connection points for those wires will be created.
Additional Connection points can be created on a right click
too.
SOLIDWORKS Electrical keeps track of Black Boxes as
components. Which means that this will show up on Bills of Materials and
Manufacturer information can be associated. Based on the connection points and
any other properties that need to be assigned, users are able to assign
component information to the black box, either by using existing manufactured
components or creating their own.
To create your own black box manufactured component with the
correct circuit details, access to the manufactured parts library is
needed. In here we can add in our own properties to a black box part and add in
the correct amount of terminal and circuits to match to the black box we have
already created. These are then saved within the library for future black box
selections.
Black
Boxes are effortless to edit to produce symbols with specific attributes with very little setup time. Once this has been done this saves further time for future projects.
Olly Smith
Applications Engineer
30/01/2015