Automated Electrical Designs:
Enormous Time Savings for Machine Building
Work with project templates, re-use standard circuits from libraries, derive documentation automatically, or create schematics at the push of a button: electrical designs for machine building can be done within hours, or even minutes. This is possible when you systematically standardise and automate typical project steps. But can this be realised within your company, too? Of course it can! EPLAN is happy to assist you with all aspects of automated engineering.
Where is your machine building heading?
Let’s take the journey together!
Automated Electrical Designs in Machine Building: Is it worth the effort?
Whether you’re experiencing an upswing or in times of crisis: the skilled worker shortage remains a troublesome topic in machine building. Companies often have just enough employees to handle the day-to-day business. So why spend time and energy right now, of all times, for automating electrical designs?
Honestly speaking, not every machine building company must fully automate its electrical engineering – the benefits should always outweigh the costs. However, if you‘ve already implemented some project templates to standardise electrical designs, you’re already well on your way towards automated engineering!
What do we want to tell you?
Very concretely: Pre-defined or individually customized libraries make it possible for EPLAN users to create schematics practically at the click of a mouse in their daily work.
The benefits of automated engineering for machine building
- Working with a centrally maintained library of circuit templates increases the design speed and quality of current projects.
- The work time spent on electrical engineering is considerably reduced – often by more than half.
- All required documentation can be derived automatically and complies with current standards and customer specifications.
- New hires as well as less-experienced employees can be trained quickly.
Tips for your getting started in automated electrical design
- You identify circuits that are repeatedly used in your daily business and gradually create a library to manage these templates.
- Keep at it! Continue expanding your library. Motivate your co-workers to also use and expand the library.
- Define universal project templates and design rules based on current standards for all of your electrical engineering designs.
- Automatically create schematics for your first sub-projects: combine circuit templates with project data, then generate and add them to your EPLAN project.
Schematics in hours instead of days
“In the past we used to plan for around three days to prepare the schematics for each low-voltage main distribution board. It now takes a colleague just five hours using EPLAN Cogineer,” says Roman Reigl, Engineering Team Leader at G. Klampfer Elektroanlagen. “In EPLAN Cogineer, the previously customary copying and editing of similar partial circuits can be replaced with automatic generation from a modular system.” This considerably reduces the time required and eliminates the possibility of error.
Schematics in hours instead of days
“In the past we used to plan for around three days to prepare the schematics for each low-voltage main distribution board. It now takes a colleague just five hours using EPLAN Cogineer,” says Roman Reigl, Engineering Team Leader at G. Klampfer Elektroanlagen. “In EPLAN Cogineer, the previously customary copying and editing of similar partial circuits can be replaced with automatic generation from a modular system.” This considerably reduces the time required and eliminates the possibility of error.
Engineering 4.0 Study Shows Possible Time Savings of Up to 80 Per Cent
Every machine building company has a unique sweet spot that represents the perfect ratio of manual efforts and standardisation efforts for electrical designs. The “Engineering 4.0” study, undertaken by EPLAN and the European 4.0 Transformation Center at RWTH Aachen University, clearly shows this. Its results lay out the path from manual to fully automated engineering, separated into five eLevels. What becomes clear is that the efforts required to achieve a higher degree of automation, even if it isn’t the highest one, almost always pays off in the long run.
White Paper: “The Competitive Advantage of Automation”
What is specifically needed to sustainably leverage the potential of digitalisation? Our white paper demonstrates how industrial companies can make major leaps in efficiency instead of just taking small, performance-enhancing steps. It additionally sheds light on what this means exactly for engineering.
No time for automated engineering? No more excuses!
No time, too few specialists, too much effort: when it comes to specifically implementing automation in everyday engineering, companies and employees have a few excuses ready. EPLAN eBUILD and a fascinating study supply you with good arguments to tackle the issue right now!
Use This EPLAN Software to Automate Your Schematic Creation
If you fully exploit the potential of your basic software, EPLAN Electric P8 for instance, you already have a slew of options for standardising your electrical designs and automating parts of them. Beyond this, the EPLAN solution for automated engineering allows for the creation of configurators. This gives even non skilled workers the ability to generate sets of schematics, or even entire EPLAN projects, just with a few clicks. We’re happy to assist you with this!
Compile Template-Based Schematics Almost Instantaneously
Take your first steps towards automated engineering with this free software, with access to a wide range of ready-made libraries with practical sub-circuits that you can use in your schematics.
Automatically Create Schematics, Re-Use Templates Time and Again
With the full version of EPLAN eBUILD, you can create your individualised template libraries and let employees and co-workers use and re-use them. Since eBUILD is based on cloud technology, your designers and engineers can access the program and libraries via EPLAN from anywhere. This makes automatic schematic creation easy and fast throughout your entire company, or even across multiple companies.
Company Solutions for Configuration and Automated Engineering
Using EPLAN Engineering Configuration (EEC) you can depict your product portfolio in a modular system with interdisciplinary functional units. Expand the topic of automated engineering to your sales department, order processing, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and control engineering, not to mention manufacturing and documentation. EEC offers you the possibility of linking configuration processes and the automatic generation of engineering documentation.
