Panel layout

A panel layout page draws the mounting plate or the door of a cabinet to scale, with the devices of the schematic as their front views.

The page

New page… with Type: Panel layout:

• Plate or door, width and height in mm;
• Scale 1:1, 1:2, 1:5, 1:10 or 1:20 (the largest that fits is offered);
• the paper; a portrait paper often suits a tall plate.

Everything on the page is in mm of the plate. Texts and line weights are given in mm of paper and drawn to the scale, so they print the same size at any scale. The grid is 5 mm.

Rails and ducts

DIN rail and Cable duct: click the start and the end. Drag their ends to change the length. A rail or duct can have a part; the parts list counts them with their lengths (2 × 540 mm). Ducts come in widths of 25 to 100 mm.

A rail carries the devices on it: move it (with the mouse or the arrow keys) and they move with it, with the parts sitting on them. Direction in its properties turns it across or up and down around its start, with its devices. On a rail up and down a device lies along it, turned by 90°; put back on a rail across, it stands up again.

Place devices

The Devices tab shows what is not placed yet on the panel (of the page's location; field devices are left out). Drag one onto the page, or double-click it and click.

• A device snaps onto a rail by its mounting point and against its neighbour, at a free place in the row: put down over an end cover, a terminal goes after the cover, not against the terminal under it. Several devices dragged together (terminals of a strip) snap as one: onto the rail, flush at a place free for all of them, and gaps of a tenth of a mm between them close. Devices standing flush stay flush when one of them gets a front view of another width (a new part): the row closes up from its left end. It goes on when the rail's axis crosses it, so a tall terminal is caught too.
• Each terminal is placed on its own; the terminals of a strip are listed in order.
• Each part of a device is placed on its own: the end cover, the end brackets and the marker carrier of a strip, the auxiliary block of a contactor. With a quantity of 2, there are two to place. A placement goes with what it places: delete a terminal on the schematic, take a part off the list of its device or lower its quantity, and its place on the panel goes too (one step of Undo with it).
• A device is drawn by its front view from the part: the 3D model, else the manufacturer's 2D view, else a rectangle of its dimensions; without dimensions the program asks for the size. See Parts and EDZ. When the device gets another part with another size, it keeps its middle (on a rail, its middle along the rail); its neighbours stay, and the check tells when it now overlaps one.
• A device covers what lies under it (the rail does not show through).
• R turns a device by 90°.
• To put a device somewhere by hand, switch snapping off: the magnet button on the toolbar, or View → Snap to rails and parts. Devices then go where you put them (on the grid; hold Alt for 1 mm). Snapping is on by default; the choice is remembered.

Double-click a placed device to see it on the schematic; from the schematic, Show on panel (right-click a symbol) goes the other way. Right-click a device in the Devices tab for Not in cabinet: it is then not expected on the panel.

Mounting points

The 3D macros of EDZ packages carry the mounting points of the parts, and the program uses them:

• G1, the point a device sits on the rail with. Terminals of different heights (ST, TWIN, QUATTRO) stand so that their bridge shafts are in one line.
• Named points other parts go onto, and the name a part goes onto. A marker carrier (KLM 3) goes onto KLM of an end bracket (CLIPFIX), an end cover (D-ST) onto COVER of a terminal.

Bring such a part near its point and it sits there, drawn over its base, and moves and turns with it. Moved away from the point, it is free again. A marker carrier may lie over neighbouring devices; that is not an overlap. An end cover sits beside its terminal, on its open side, and takes its own place in the row: it goes only onto a terminal with nothing beside it (the last of a row), and what comes next stands after the cover; something put over it is shown as an overlap. The check tells a terminal whose open side is bare: no cover on it, and the next terminal not there or lower (a ST 2.5 after a QUATTRO), and a cover lower than its terminal. So may a further part of a device on its main part (an auxiliary contact block or the suppressor of a contactor, the second and later parts of the device): it is drawn over it and picked first there; over another device or a duct it is an overlap. A part that sticks out of its base on the side where nothing stands (a marker carrier on the end bracket at the end of a strip) is moved along to stick out over the terminals instead, flush with the outer side of the bracket.

Parts imported before the program knew these points get them when their EDZ package is imported again; then bring a project up to date with Update parts from database…. For a part of your own, set the points in the part editor, tab Panel (Own parts and symbols).

Wire lengths

From the panel layout the program works out how long each wire of the cabinet is, as it is laid:

• A wire leaves a device on the side it is drawn on in the schematic: a connection drawn upwards leaves at the top, one drawn downwards at the bottom (turned with the device). The connections of a side are spread evenly along it, in the order of the part's connections (1/L1, 3/L2, 5/L3, 13, A1…; without a part, by designation); where the EDZ package of the part has its connection point pattern (EPLAN Pro Panel), the wire goes from the connection's place on the front of the device and leaves the way the package says; a connection put in the part's editor (Panel tab, Connection) wins over both. Lengths are measured from these places. A terminal is wired inside from the top and outside from the bottom.
• It goes straight into the duct ahead (or the nearest one), along the ducts (ducts that cross or touch are joined) and out to the other device. Without ducts it goes straight across, at right angles.
• A wire to the door goes on the door to the hinges, through the loop to the plate, and on along the ducts of the plate.
• To the way a reserve is added at each end, and the length is rounded up.

Devices on one potential (+24V, 0V, L1) or joined through interruption points are wired one after another, in the order of the pages: each two neighbours make one wire. The chain passes only through points that take two wires (a point whose part says nothing counts as taking two); one taking a single wire, a terminal ST 2.5, is wired from the nearest device of the chain with a clamp still free. Where none has one, the check says so. Terminals bridged by a jumper get one wire together: the jumper takes it on.

Wiring order. To wire them in another order (from the power supply first, say), open Wiring order of +24V…: right-click a row via +24V in the Connections table, or a route of the chain on a panel layout, or use the button in the properties of its wire. Move the devices with Up and Down or drag them; Page order goes back to the order of the pages. Devices added later come at the end, in the order of the pages.

Bus. In the same window, Wired can be set to a bus: each device of the potential gets its own wire to it, which suits PE and N on terminals that take one wire each. The bus is one of its devices (a PE bar on the plate: the lengths go to it, and it takes any number of wires unless its part says otherwise) or a bus not drawn (the wires have no length).

The Length column of the Connections table shows the result (hover it for the way without reserves); via +24V marks a connection to a potential point, whose wires are in the report Connection list. That report lists every wire with its length, and at the end the metres of wire by cross-section and colour. A core of a cable has no length of its own: it goes with its cable.

Wire routes

Show wire routes (View menu, or the button next to the magnet) draws on panel layouts how each wire is laid: from its device into the duct, along the ducts and out to the other device; a wire to the door runs to the hinge edge on the door and on the plate. The line has the colour of the wire (grey dashed without one) and is thicker for a larger cross-section; the properties of a selected wire give both. The wires and cables in a duct lie side by side across it, spread over its width, so you see how many run there and where each turns off; the lengths go by the duct's middle line. Cores of cables are not drawn: they go with their cable. The routes are not printed.

Click a route to select the wire: best on its piece at the device, as in the ducts the routes lie on top of each other. Shift+click or an area selects more. The properties of a selected wire:

• Colour and Cross-section. A drawn wire takes them itself. An automatic connection becomes a drawn wire between the same two points on the schematic, which looks the same and carries them. A wire of a potential (devices on +24V wired one after another) takes them from the potential: all points of the potential get them, so all its wires do. With several wires selected, both go to all of them.
• Length, mm: type a length to use it as it is (in the tables, reports, the wire list and the markers); leave it empty to work it out again. Way shows what was worked out.

Move a route. Drag a segment of a selected route across itself, e.g. from one duct into another; the pieces next to it stretch, the ends at the devices stay. With snapping on, a segment dropped in a duct goes onto its middle line. The length is then that of the route as drawn (plus the reserves). When a device moves, the pieces at its end follow it. Reset route in the properties takes the route back to the one worked out. A selected route is picked first where routes lie on each other in a duct. Wires leaving one point of a device the same way are drawn side by side there, with a short step at the point; click a selected route again where others lie under it, and the next one is selected.

Move a cable. A selected cable is dragged the same way: a segment across itself into another duct. Where it comes in stays; where it is stripped goes with its last piece, and the cores go on from there to their devices along the ducts. Its length inside the cabinet is then that of the way laid plus the core to the farthest device. Right-click it for Reset cable route.

The reserve, the loop to the door, the side of the hinges and the rounding are set in Project properties… → Wires and cables. A wire whose device is not placed on a panel layout has no length; Check project counts them in a note.

Duct fill

With Show wire routes each duct is tinted by how full it is: green, yellow within 10 points of the limit, red above it. Fill in the properties of a duct gives the per cent and what lies at its fullest place. The fill is taken where the duct is fullest, not over its whole length: wires come in and go out at different places.

• What lies in it: the wires along their routes, each cable up to where it is stripped, and its cores from there.
• A wire is as thick as an H07V-K wire of its cross-section (one without a cross-section as 1.5 mm²). A cable is as thick as its Outer diameter (cable properties); left empty, as its part says, else worked out from its cores (4G1,5 ≈ 9 mm).
• The duct's cross-section is the width and depth of its part (Duct 60×60); without a part, its width squared.
• The limit is 60 %, set in Project properties… → Wires and cables → Duct fill limit. Check project warns of each duct above it.

Cable entries and door transition

Cable entry (Insert menu, plate pages) puts a cable gland on the plate: a circle named E1, E2…; give it a part (Choose part…, its diameter comes from the part) and it is in the parts list. In the properties of a cable choose its Entry: the cable then comes in there, and its run inside the cabinet is measured from the gland along the ducts to the farthest device of its cores. One gland takes one cable; Automatic keeps the way the program works it out (in at the bottom or top of the plate, under the terminals). Check project notes a gland no cable takes.

Door transition marks where the wires leave the plate for the door, and (on the door page) where they come onto it; one on a page, a new one takes the place of the old. Wires and cables to the door go along the ducts of the plate to it, through the loop, and from the point on the door to their devices. Without them the edge at the hinges is taken, at the height of the device on the door.

With Show wire routes a cable's way in the cabinet is drawn as it is laid: the cable as one thick grey line from its gland along the ducts to where it is stripped (where its first core leaves the duct), and from there each core as a line to its terminal, drawn like a wire: in the colour and cross-section given to its wire (in its properties or the Connections table), else in the colour its name says (BN, GNYE; numbered cores are black) and as thick as the cable's cross-section. Click it for the cable's properties.

Dimensions

Insert → Dimension: click the first point, the second point, then where the dimension line goes. Corners, middles of sides and centres of the plate, rails, ducts and devices are caught (a green circle shows it); hold Shift to measure along the points. A dimension on objects follows them when they move.

Text and graphics

Texts, lines, rectangles and circles work as on schematic pages: labels of the door, a cut-out, a note.

Check

Check project also reports devices placed twice, placements whose device is gone and devices that overlap one another or a duct.