- An electrical component represents a uniquely identified
assembly made up of manufacturer part or parts.
Components can be represented by different symbols
throughout our projects.
The concept of exactly what is meant by a component,
or a part, or a symbol may be confusing at first,
but it is a very important concept
with SOLIDWORKS Electrical.
So I like to use this diagram
when trying to help explain exactly what are components.
So, a component may be represented by a manufacturer part
or multiple manufacturer parts.
It's also going to be represented by a symbol
or multiple symbols, for example, the schematic symbols
and the line diagram symbols we just saw.
Then, most importantly, those manufacturer parts,
the actual parts we purchase, have circuits,
a number of electrical connection points,
and the symbols we insert on our drawings also have circuits
or those electrical connection points.
At the end of the day, our hope is that those circuits from
our symbols on our drawings will match up with those
circuits on our actual manufacturer parts,
what we're actually going to be physically wiring up.
So a good example of this ...
if we just jump into a project here.
Jump into my power page zero four here.
Very good example of this, what exactly is a component,
maybe more of a complex component,
is I'm going to take a look at this contactor K1.
So a contactor is a good example of a fairly
complicated component, because it's probably broken up into
a whole bunch of different symbols across maybe a
whole bunch of different pages.
So again, if I want to take a look more into my
component here, right now I just have this one symbol,
it looks like, indicating a component K1.
It looks like it's a Schneider Electric part,
part number and so on.
But if I want to see more into the actual component,
I can switch over from my documents list
and I'll jump into my components list.
I can search all the components within my project here.
But I'm going to find K1, here's K1, and expand that K-1.
So notice, this is my contactor.
See, it's a fairly complicated part.
Most components, let's say if I take a look at my F1,
for example, might just have one or two symbols
associated with it.
But my contactor component K1 looks like it's broken up
into six different symbols here,
and you can also see the page number they're on.
It's on page four, six, three, seven and 11.
The icons indicate what type of symbol it is
so these guys here are schematic symbols.
This looks like to be a line diagram symbol
and this one here looks to be a 2D footprint.
So, essentially, this one contactor
is broken up across multiple drawings.
Nisca's contactors generally will have power components
as well as control components.
There's also going to be a relay coil
tied to this same contactor and so on.
What's really handy here,
I can easily jump to any of these symbols.
So, for example, if I just right click
on any of these symbols
and I have, go to
and that will jump me to that specific symbol.
So the first one on the list is actually
this three phase power contact.
Looks like I have a relay coil on a different page,
page six.
Again, I can just right click and say, go to
and that automatically jumps me into page six
and a relay coil that's tied with the same component K1.
Same idea, I can jump through each of these, go to,
here's a normally open contact
that's tied with that same contactor.
I can jump into ...
let's just take a look at the line diagram.
There's my K1 line diagram of my contactor and so forth.
So at the end of the day, a component is what's going to maybe
come in on your building materials.
But there might be a whole bunch of manufacturer parts
tied to it,
and potentially a whole number of symbols
tied to it as well.