- [Narrator] Design rule checks
help to identify any potential electrical errors
that may have occurred during your design process.
SOLIDWORKS Electrical will run
through your entire electrical project
and warn you if there might be any potential issues
within your design.
So, to run my design rule checks,
I can go into the project tab,
and all the way on the right hand side we have reports
that will generate our final reports
we'll see in just a minute.
And also design rule checks.
So if I click on design rule checks,
this will give me a list of a whole bunch of checks
that my project is running through.
And so in this case I just have three added to my list,
but I can add a whole number
of additional design rule checks as well.
So if I just go into the add button here,
these are a whole number of
pre-created design rule checks for us.
These come default with your SOLIDWORKS installation.
So for example if you have duplicated components
or duplicate connection points.
If the have some equipotential errors,
or unused cables, voltage drops, and so on.
And of course you can customize
and build your own design rule checks as well,
but with the SOLIDWORKS Electrical default install
you have about 20 or 30 here.
And these are probably the most commonly used issues
that you'd run into in your electrical design.
So in this case, I can just check off
which ever design rule checks I'd like to use.
For this project I'm just using
a few simple ones as an example.
Empty terminal strip, any equipotential conflicts,
as well as any wires without numbers or marks,
and you can say okay to that.
And so essentially what it does
it checks through my entire project
and creates a list of where it thinks there might be issues.
Now it's just going to tell you where the issue is occurring,
the location and so forth.
It's not going to fix these issues for you
as they may not necessarily be issues.
You as the designer or the engineer
have to decide whether this is an issue
or this is actually what you've intended.
So, generally I'd just run through
each and every one of these
and take a look at maybe what's going on.
So my first issue I'm seeing here is wires without marks.
So wires that have not been numbered.
And I can see a whole large list here.
So this is a common one,
one you'd run into fairly often.
If you've forgot to number a wire,
forgot to give it a number,
or forgot to automatically number all your wires.
So if I wanted to try to resolve this,
I'll just close out of my design rule checks here,
and I want to number my wires.
I can see none of these wires really have numbers on them.
So again, to do that I can jump into the process tab,
and I can just say number new wires, or re-number wires.
And I'm just going to re-number my wires here.
Now I can see each of my wires
should have some numbers coming into them.
So I probably got rid of a whole bunch of those issues.
So I'll go back and check.
I can jump into project tab, design rule check,
and now wires without mark.
Looks like all of those wires have now been numbered.
And same idea, just go through the whole list.
Let's jump down to equipotential conflicts.
So here there's just signals crossing
and that maybe shouldn't be.
So again it gives you the equipotential and the location.
So file six it looks like or whatever it may be.
And it looks like there's just a signal crossing.
Looks like one wire may be on signal one,
one wires on signal two.
So let's try to find this issue.
We also have a bit of a graphical representation of this.
So if I check out my equipotentials, here's my one
that I was looking for.
And it also is showing me this kind of blue spike
or blue dot.
And that's indicating a equipotential issue.
So what that means is
it's just connecting to something that it shouldn't be.
So I've connected 24 volts
to 12 volts or something like this.
So if I take a look at this cable here,
this wire here.
Looks like the signal or the mark for it is one,
and if I remember that error,
it said I was trying to connect it to another signal
that was signal two.
So if I take a look where's this coming from,
and it's jumping across a different page here.
And it's page six, that was the location given.
And here it is now defined as equipotential two.
So there's my equipotential conflict.
So I have a couple different ways I can resolve this.
I can just change them of course,
I want them to be on the same signal,
since they're the same wire here
just across different pages.
So they should both be signal one, or signal two,
or ground, or whatever it may be.
So I can just right click on these, or change the property,
change the mark, whatever it might be.
If I right click,
I do have a solve equipotential conflicts option as well.
That will pretty much just ask you
which of those signals is the correct one.
If neither is correct, and you want to change it completely,
then you'd have to go into the properties
and change from two here to say three
or whatever value it should be.
But let's say, in my case,
I really wanted both of these to be on the same signal,
and I'd call that signal one.
Or wire number one, or whatever it may be in your case.
And now if I check back,
it looks like that graphical representation should be fixed.
They're both on signal or mark one.
So if I go back into my design rule of check,
check my potential conflicts,
and it looks like that one has been resolved as well.
Finally, just continue down the list.
I go to empty terminal strips.
This one should be a fairly simple one as well.
It's telling me I have a terminal strip called X4,
which seems to be empty.
Might be an issue for me.
Either I need to add terminals to it,
add manufacturer parts and so on,
or maybe it's just a terminal strip I don't even need
and I can just delete that
to get it off any billing material or anything like that.
So I'll check out my X4.
Jump into my component list here,
check out my terminals.
I have X1.
Expand that, yep, that has eight terminals we've been using.
X2 has four terminals we've been using as well.
X4 here, looks like there's no terminals within it.
So maybe I need to add some terminals to it
or some parts to it, or maybe I just don't need it at all.
I'm not going to use X4 at all, so I'm just going to delete this.
And then of course, jump back.
Double check my design rule checks.
And looks like we've resolved
the terminal strip issue as well.
So again, design rule checks just there
to give you an idea of where there might be
some design issues, and then you as the engineer
or the designer need to run through those
to check if that's what should be expected,
or if this something you should try to fix up.