How to draw electrical cables

ProfiCAD lets you draw cable symbols and automatically generates a cable list for your project.

To draw a cable, choose Insert - Cable from the menu, then use the mouse to cross the connections that form the cable.

A dialog window opens where you enter the cable's name, type, and estimated length.

In the lower part of this dialog, you'll find the Core labels area. Here you can enter a label for each cable core and choose whether it should be visible. These core labels appear both in the drawing and in the cable list print report.

Press Esc to finish drawing cables.

The Cable Manager (menu Outputs - Cable Manager) gives you an overview of all cables in the drawing and lets you edit their properties. You can change the name, type, and length of any cable directly in the table.

The Cables List (menu Outputs - Cables List) lets you print a list of all cables. Check the group option to display total cable lengths by type.

To change the name, type, or length of a cable, you have two options:

• Right-click the cable symbol and select Properties to open the cable data dialog.
• Edit the values directly in the Cable Manager table.

Cables with multiple symbols

A single cable can consist of multiple symbols that share the same cable name. This is useful when a cable continues on another page, or when each cable symbol represents only some of the cable's cores.

How to rename a cable

a) In the Properties panel - all symbols of that cable are renamed at once.

b) Right-click on the cable symbol and select Properties - only that specific cable symbol is renamed.