One of the most powerful and useful tool on Electra is intelligent duplication of entire circuits. In most schematic drawings, there are similar circuits that are duplicated throughout the drawing (e.g. motor starter and control circuits). All references and wires on these circuits must be correctly and uniquely numbered. The issue is further complicated by the fact that certain symbols should be renumbered while others left unchanged (e.g. a common safety relay on motor control circuits should not be renumbered). Electra solves all this complexity by allowing users to choose wires and references that should be left unchanged and automatically and intelligently renumbering wires and references through its AutoRename window.
To duplicate and reuse your circuits:
Pre-Fabricated (Prefab) circuits are circuits that you often use on your projects and are created and stored in a custom stencil of your own choosing. Prefab circuits are extremely portable, and easily shared among different projects, teams or even online, by simply sending over a stencil.
To create a prefab circuit:
Your newly created prefab circuit will be then be stored in the stencil of your choosing.
To use a prefab circuit, simply drag and drop them from your stencil and place it anywhere on your drawing. Electra will automatically display the AutoRename window to ensure all numberings are correct.
To share a prefab circuit, simply copy the stencil with the prefab circuit and make it available on a network drive to be shared among team members, or compress the stencil into a zip file to be emailed to anyone.
Prefab circuits CANNOT be dragged and drop from one stencil to another, unlike other symbols. Therefore, to move or duplicate Prefab circuits:
Your Prefab circuit will now be duplicated to the target stencil of your choosing. The original prefab circuit can now be deleted simply by click on the prefab circuit on the original stencil and pressing the DEL key.