working with documents

Electrical diagrams are saved on your hard drive as files with "sxe" extension. Commands for working with your electrical diagrams are located in the "File" menu. Some of the commands may be activated using buttons on the toolbar.

New

Creates a new document.

Open

Opens an existing document, stored on your hard drive.

Close

Closes the active document, e.g. the document, which is currently opened. If you have not saved the last changes to your document, you will be asked to save the document before its closed.

Save

Saves the active document, e.g. the document, which is currently opened. Is it important to save your work as frequently as possible.

Save as...

Saves the active document, e.g. the document, which is currently opened, under a new name. This will allow you to save your document under a new name.

Print

Prints the active document.

Print preview

Shows the layout of the document as it will be printed on the paper.

Printer settings

Shows a dialog box to set printer parameters, such as paper size, feeder type, print quality, etc.

Send...

Sends the active document by e-mail.

This function only works if you have an e-mail client (such as Microsoft Outlook Express 6) installed on your PC.

Export...

Saves a document or its part as an image. You can choose from the following formats: bitmap, PNG or EMF.

FORMAT	CHARACTERISTICS AND USE
Bitmap	Basic graphics format of Windows system. It is a raster graphics format. The image is saved as a two dimensional field of pixels. If you change the dimensions of raster graphics image the image quality will be lower.
PNG - Portable Network Graphics	PNG is, the same as Bitmap, a raster graphics format. Advantage of this format is a very high compression rate. Therefore a PNG file is much smaller than a bitmap file. A black and white electronics diagram saved in a PNG format does not take up more than just several Kbs. Small diagrams frequently take up even less than 1 KB! This format is very useful for publishing the electrical diagrams on the Internet, as part of HTML pages).
EMF - Enhanced MetaFile (successor of the WMF - Windows MetaFile)	EMF is a vector graphics format. The main advantage of this format is the fact that the image is stored as instructions to draw the graphics item the image is composed of. Dimensions of the image can be adjusted without affecting the image quality. The image quality remains the same. EMF format is particularly useful when inserting your electrical diagrams into other document formats, such as MS WORD, MS EXCEL, etc. It is very easy to adjust the size, background color, contours, etc. of the electrical diagram in EMF format. It works in the same way as for instance cliparts in MS Words. In addition to exporting electrical diagrams we can also draw any other shape and use the ProfiCAD software as vector image editor. There are two methods of pasting a electrical diagram into a document: 1. In ProfiCAD click on Edit - Copy the diagram to clipboard as an image. Now switch to the application in which you want to paste the diagram (for instance MS Word) and press Ctrl+V. The image is now inserted in the document. Now you can change the size, location, position, background color, frame, etc. 2. In the ProfiCAD menu select File - Export. Select the EMF file format. An .emf file will be stored to your hard drive. The EMF file can be inserted any time to any application (for instance to MS Word). Proceed as follows: Select menu Insert - Picture - From file and browse the EMF file you wish to paste into the document.

There are four export options:

Whole document - exports the whole document.
Whole document including the title block.
Screen - exports only the part of the document, which is currently visible on the screen. Before using this option adjust window size so that the area of the drawing you want to export is visible.
Automatic - the program automatically selects the minimum size of the document required for displaying all symbols and graphical shapes.

You can also specify whether you want a frame around the diagram or not and, if you selected the frame, its color. Finally, a dialog window will be displayed, where you need to enter the name of the exported file, where you want to save it on your hard drive (path) and type of image - black and white or coloured.

Note:

If you export to EMF format, the program automatically selects the automatic export option, regardless the setting you made in the dialog box.

Resolution of the image is determined by the zoom that was active when the export was made - the larger zoom, the higher resolution.

Bill of material...

This command displays a dialog box with a list of symbols used in the electrical diagram. The symbols are sorted into groups. This list of symbols can be exported into a text file. The exported file is in a Tab Separated Values format. The exported list of symbols can be opened - for instance - in MS Excel. You can also insert this list into the drawing.

...more about Bill of material

Netlist...

This command displays a dialog box with a netlist - list of wires and symbol outlets conneted to them. This netlist can be exported into a text file. The exported file is Tab Separated Values format. The exported list can be opened - for instance - in MS Excel. You can also insert this list into the drawing.

...more about Netlist