Circuit Control - Description

The Circuit Control application is a PC database program that can be used to easily manage all data directly related to large (or small) electrical construction projects.

Major data elements include Circuits, Equipment, Cables and Drawings. The equipment items serve as the endpoints for the circuits. Data related to circuits include a complete description of the cable used on each circuit, a list of the conductors, their wire numbers and terminals (from and to), a list of wireway elements for the path of each circuit, a list of drawings of interest for each circuit. Data related to each equipment item include a device type code, an area/system code and a list of related drawings.

Full featured reporting capabilities are supported. The usefulness of the application is realized in all phases of the project.

Entries may be made in any order and may be easily modified. Important data elements include Circuits, Equipment, Cables and Drawing References. The data elements are inter-related. Manual data entry is minimized by taking full advantage of modern relational database tables. This means that any single data item is entered only once and may be referred to as many times as required. The item is simply selected from the existing list. Modifications made to data are reflected every where that data is referred to. Data entry is further facilitated by the ability to create new circuit and equipment entries by duplicating existing entries. Therefore, a project with a high amount of redundancy can be established with relative ease.

Cable and conduit requirements are monitored by on-line queries or reports. The usage of each cable type is easily retrieved. A total required length is reported based on the length entered on each individual circuit. Conduit fill can be monitored by means of a report.

During installation, the application is used to track the status of equipment and circuits. Equipment tracking items include: To be Removed, Removed, To be Installed, Received, Installed, Connected, Electrical Check, and Complete. Circuit tracking items include: Conduit Run, Prepared to Pull, Cable Pulled, From Terminations and To Terminations. Updating requires only that a check box be checked.

When preparing to pull wire, reports can be generated to provide all required information to identify the cable and the circuit it is required for. Mistakes are thereby avoided. Cable tags may be printed on special stock using a tractor fed dot matrix printer. Precisely tailored reports are produced using powerful and flexible selection mechanisms. Selection criteria for all circuit reports include:

• Cable Item Number or Conductor Size
• To/From Area
• Device Type

As an example, it is trivial to produce a report of all circuits going to a particular area/system using a specified cable.

Once cable is pulled, the Circuit Sheet report may be used to during termination. The report, consisting of an individual sheet for each circuit selected, includes all related circuit data (including wire colors, wire number, from/to equipment numbers and descriptions etc.). Wire sleeves or wraps may be printed using special stock on a dot-matrix printer.

A list of all circuits to or from an equipment item or an area/system is easily obtained. A single wire number may be traced through a path of many circuits by searching on the wire number. Progress may be recorded as equipment and circuits are checked out.

After the installation is completed, the accumulated data becomes a valuable tool to those responsible for maintaining the facility. Troubleshooting, disaster recovery, upgrades and other tasks are facilitated. Immediate answers are available to questions such as:

• What circuits go to a particular area or equipment?
• What are all the circuits running through this tray or conduit?
• Are there any spare conductors in this cable?

Data in existing projects may be leveraged by transferring (copying) it to a new project. Any existing project can serve as a master repository of data. In this way, a master catalog of cables, device codes wire color schemes and label parts may be maintained.

Each project maintains its own copy of the data required by the project. In this way, each project may stand on its own and will therefore be portable so it may be installed on other computers.

The relationships between data items are guarded. It is not possible to delete items that are referred to by other items within the project. For example, if a cable is being used on any circuits in the project, it will not be possible to delete the cable.

The data model is relational. Data is entered one time and may be referred to by many related items. Once an equipment item is defined it may be associated with many circuits without having to do any repeated entry. The item is simply selected from the existing list.

The project file can easily be saved to a compressed backup file for safeguarding of valuable data and to make it easy to copy the project file from one computer to another.