New Time-Saving Drawing Features and Automated Tasks
Template and Project Settings
- Regional Settings - Easy selection of US or Metric units and world currencies from drop-down lists.
- Page Sizes - Easy selection of template page sizes from B, C or D size or Metric A1, A2, or A3 from drop-down list.
- Prewire Lengths - Easy setting of default global prewire lengths for each project. Changing individual wire length is done on individual wires. (All template and project settings are accessed from the Title page)
Device Categories
ECAV has taken the J-STD-710 plan symbol standard to a higher level with more real-world device symbol categories, status, and mounting types. The legends shown are displayed on each page's title block. ECAV supports all residential and commercial installations including Infrastructure, Audio, Video, Control, Network, Communications, HVAC, Power, Surveillance, Hardware, Lighting, Access Control, Furnishings, Vacuum, Shades, Fire and Security/Alarm
Help Pages
Each drawing page in the template has an ECAV Help layer which is easily accessed from the page's right-click menu. Each page's layer has help topics associated with the particular page type. There is also access to help videos from each page's help layer.
Page Legends
Automatically generated page legends on the AV floor plan and block diagram pages for easy symbol identification.
Block Devices
Block diagram devices (products) automatically inherit location data from the spaces they’re in and can display important device data such as manufacturer, model, reference ID, cost, etc. This data is needed for generating the bill of materials.
Prewires
Room prewires automatically inherit their wire type, source location and connected equipment from their matching headend wire group symbols. They inherit their destination location and connected equipment from the rooms they're in. This wire data is needed for prewire schedules and the Copy Shapes feature.
Prewire Totals
Headend Wire Group symbols automatically display and keep track of associated room prewire totals to help you design faster and for easy on-site wire total verification.
Copy Shapes
ECAV’s powerful Copy Shapes feature easily transforms your floor plan or block diagram design symbols into engineering (schematic) symbols for faster and error-free layouts of schematic and rack elevation drawings.
Data Linking
Symbols on the drawing pages can represent specific real-world products. ECAV makes it easy to link your symbols to product specification data. Just add a new data row for each of your products, refresh the external data, and link the rows to your device symbols on the drawing page. The linked symbols are then used for visualizing the data on your drawing pages, running important project reports and for the Copy Shapes feature.
With our Symbol Pack option we’ll create the data rows and product symbols of your choice for you.
Prewire Schedules
Automatically generate prewire schedules from the AV floor plan drawing or block diagram, sorted by room, wire type or wire ID.
Bill of Materials
Automatically generate BoMs from the block diagram and rack elevation drawings. Sort the project BoM by manufacturer or by room.
AC Power and Ventilation
Simple one-step System Power and Ventilation report shows how many electrical circuits are needed and the proper ventilation required for the project’s safe and reliable operation.
Symbol Names
New symbols are conveniently and automatically named by manufacturer and model number when dropped into their custom stencils. Afterwards, symbols are automatically retrieved by manufacture and model when using the Copy Shapes feature.
Grid & Guides
Symbols snap to the drawing grid and color-coded guides for easy drawing alignment and layout. Green for right edge of devices, Red for right edge of rooms and headends, and Blue for left edge of rooms and headends.
Snap & Glue
There’s never a need to adjust Snap and Glue for the different drawing pages because ECAV knows what page-type you’re working on and automatically adjusts the appropriate settings.
Symbol Forms
ECAV provides three methods to visualize and update symbol data: the shape data window, the right-click menu, and the specially designed Symbol Form. Choose the most appropriate way for you to quickly view and change the data in your drawings.