February 05, 2010
This Readme contains important information about AutoCAD Electrical that may not be included in the printed documentation or in Help.
Join the Customer Involvement Program
Plotting multiple drawing files to a single PDF file
Uninstalling AutoCAD Electrical 2011 and user folders
Display Cross-referencing in graphical format
Note: For additional information related specifically to AutoCAD 2011 that may not be included in the printed documentation or in Help, you can review the AutoCAD readme, acad.readme.chm, which is located in the Help folder in your AutoCAD Electrical 2011 install folder (C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Acade 2011\Help).
A Deployment Wizard is available to allow easy installation of AutoCAD Electrical for a network or multi-seat standalone installation. This makes it easier to install the package over a network or to share files. For more information, please refer to the Network Administration and Deployment section in the AutoCAD Installation/Licensing Help from the Read the Documentation link in the installation wizard.
If the Deployment Wizard is taking a long time to create a deployment and Norton Anti-virus is installed, disabling the "File System Real-time Protection" option should improve the deployment time.
Note: It is recommended to create the Deployment on a machine that does not already have AutoCAD Electrical 2011 installed. If AutoCAD Electrical 2011 is installed on the same machine a deployment is created on, the initialization of AutoCAD Electrical during the deployment creation will take a considerable amount of time. If you would like to use GPO to deploy AutoCAD Electrical across a network, you should review the Distributing an Autodesk Program section in the AutoCAD Installation/Licensing Help. This document can be accessed from the Read the Documentation link from the main installer dialog.
You can activate your license by going to http://www.autodesk.com/register and following the on-screen instructions.
If you plan to install Vault 2011, please refer to the Autodesk Vault 2011 Readme from the Read the Documentation link in the installation wizard.
While every attempt has been made to ensure that files saved in the BETA release can be opened and used in the final release version of AutoCAD Electrical 2011, we cannot guarantee the integrity of files saved in the BETA release.
The BETA builds must be uninstalled, including Autodesk Material Library, prior to installing the release. When the uninstall is complete, any customized files in the following folders should be backed up, if needed, and the folders should be removed:
Windows XP:
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Autodesk\AutoCAD Electrical 2011 Beta
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\Autodesk\Acade 2011
C:\Documents and Settings\{username}\Application Data\Autodesk\AutoCAD Electrical 2011 Beta
C:\Documents and Settings\{username}\Local Settings\Application Data\Autodesk\AutoCAD Electrical 2011 Beta
C:\Documents and Settings\{username}\My Documents\Acade 2011
C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Acade 2011
Windows Vista/Windows 7:
C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\AutoCAD Electrical 2011 Beta
C:\Users\Public\Documents\Autodesk\Acade 2011
C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\AutoCAD Electrical 2011 Beta
C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Autodesk\AutoCAD Electrical 2011 Beta
C:\Users\{username}\Documents\Acade 2011
C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Acade 2011
If you plan on running AutoCAD Electrical 2011 on a 64 bit OS, you will need to have a dual processor system. AutoCAD Electrical will run on a single 64 bit processor machine, but there will be some performance issues.
You are invited to participate in helping guide the direction of AutoCAD Electrical software.
If you participate in the Customer Involvement Program, specific information about how you use AutoCAD Electrical is forwarded to Autodesk. This information includes what features you use the most, problems that you encounter, and other information helpful to the future direction of the product.
See the following links for more information.
To learn what's new in AutoCAD Electrical 2011, please see the What's New link from the AutoCAD Electrical 2011 Help main window.
The New Features Workshop in AutoCAD Electrical 2011 contains a series of animated demonstrations, illustrations, and feature overviews designed to help you learn about the new features in AutoCAD and AutoCAD Electrical. To access the New Features Workshop, On the InfoCenter toolbar (upper right of the AutoCAD Electrical window), to the right of the Help button, click the drop-down and select New Features Workshop. The New Features Workshop contains information about new features for the following applications and version: AutoCAD Electrical 2011, AutoCAD Electrical 2010, AutoCAD Electrical 2009, AutoCAD 2011, AutoCAD 2010 and AutoCAD 2009. To select a different application and/or version, use the drop-down menu on the New Features Workshop window.
The AutoCAD Electrical 2011 Getting Started guide can be accessed from the Read Documentation link on the first installation dialog or from the AutoCAD Electrical 2011 Help main window. This Getting Started guide uses the JIC drawing configuration and symbol library.
The AutoCAD Electrical 2011 allows the plotting of multiple drawing files to a single PDF file using either the AutoCAD Electrical Publish To DWF command or the standard AutoCAD Publish command.
The uninstall cleans up the USER folder of the user that is uninstalling AutoCAD Electrical 2011; it does not clean up other USER folders on the machine. This is only an issue if there are multiple users on one machine. Having old USER folders could cause issues when you reinstall AutoCAD Electrical 2011 onto the same machine since AutoCAD Electrical 2011 might read files from the previous install.
The folder that is not cleaned up by the uninstall is:
Windows XP:
C:\Documents and Settings\{username}\Application Data\Autodesk\AutoCAD Electrical 2011
Windows Vista/Windows 7:
C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\AutoCAD Electrical 2011
If you are using AutoCAD Electrical in a multi-user environment, you can refer to the Advanced Productivity section of the Help for additional tips. A link to the Advanced Productivity section is found on the AutoCAD Electrical Help main window.
Graphical cross-referencing takes advantage of the AcadEref TrueType font that gets installed during the installation of AutoCAD Electrical 2011. The graphical cross-referencing option is configurable on the Project Properties and Drawing Properties dialog boxes. The following TrueType characters are used for the graphical representation of normally open (N.O) and normally closed (N.C) contacts:
Lowercase letter o and lowercase letter x for JIC/ANSI N.O. and N.C. respectively.
Capital letter O and capital letter X for IEC/GB/JIS/DIN N.O. and N.C. respectively.
Lowercase letter n and lowercase letter w for Form-C JIC/ANSI N.O. and N.C. respectively.
Capital letter N and capital letter W for Form-C IEC/GB/JIS/DIN N.O. and N.C. respectively.
If you need to make manual adjustments to the automatically generated cross-reference Mtext, make sure you reference the new AcadEref font and use the character mentioned above to represent the graphics.
For Windows XP, the C:\Documents and Settings\{username}\Application Data folder is a hidden folder by default. For Windows Vista and Windows 7, the C:\Users\{username}\AppData folder is a hidden folder by default. If your Windows folder options do not include "Show hidden files and folders" then you will not be able to easily browse past this hidden folder.
To preserve run-time adjustments when going from drawing to drawing during the conversion process, flip to SDI mode by closing all but one drawing, type SDI at the command line prompt and then enter a value of 1.
Below is a list of global variables that can be set to make run-time adjustments to how the Promis•e Conversion utility converts drawings. These global variables can be set at the command line or embedded in either a script file or small AutoLISP file.
To suppress conversion of one or more block names, enter this expression:
(setq GBL_wd_p2ae_no_convert_blocknames block1,block2,block3)
where the block can include wildcards. Multiple block names are comma-delimited.
Example: (setq GBL_wd_p2ae_no_convert_blocknames *_CP,TITLEBLOCK)
To retain existing, unconverted cross-reference tables, enter this expression:
(setq GBL_wd_p2ae_special_config 1)
To retain existing Promis•e Xdata on converted symbols, enter this expression:
(setq GBL_wd_p2ae_preserve_xdata 1)
To override the default nameplate block name identifier of *DLG*, enter this expression:
(setq GBL_wd_p2ae_nameplate_blk_nam
To override the default child contact block name flags of *NO*,*NC*, enter this expression:
(setq GBL_wd_p2ae_child_blk_nam
To override default attribute prefix of ECS_T_, enter this expression:
(setq GBL_wd_p2ae_prefix
To override new block insertion scale of 1.0, enter this expression:
(setq GBL_wd_p2ae_scale x.x)
where x.x=new scale factor
To override the default layer name for the green wire connection markers, enter this expression:
(setq GBL_wd_layername_cp
To override the default layer name for origin triangle symbols, enter this expression:
(setq GBL_wd_layername_rp
When plotting drawings to PDF files, each PDF file is displayed in Adobe reader after it is plotted.
AutoCAD Electrical 2011 PDF plotter configurations allow for each PDF created to be displayed in a PDF viewer after the file has been plotted. This is a configurable option which is turned ON by default in the 'DWG To PDF.pc3' configuration file, but is turned OFF by default in the 'Acade - DWG To PDF.pc3' configuration file. If you do not want to display the PDF file after it has been plotted, you can either select the 'Acade - DWG To PDF.pc3' configuration file to use during plotting or configure the 'DWG To PDF.pc3' configuration file to not display the PDF file when plotting is complete.
When mixing product languages and operating system languages AutoCAD Electrical does not function properly.
AutoCAD Electrical does not support running a specific language product on a different language operating system. For example, running a Simplified Chinese AutoCAD Electrical on an English operating System will not function properly and is not a supported configuration. In some cases this might work when the languages are similar.
Copyright © 2010 Autodesk, Inc.