Wire labeling and electric diagrams doubt

Is there a standard or guideline to wire labeling?

I have some experience as control engineer , an depending on the PLC brand being used we change the label nomenclature (IX.Y for siemens, I:XX/YY for AB, etc)

It had worked just fine with small to medium projects. Now that we are working in bigger projects, we have had some throuble when using remote i/o (EIP, PN, PB, IOL) with the CompactLogix family, because it doesn't use the same addressing as the MicroLogix, so the label is only used to identify the wires and sensors.

Some time ago, i tried to implement only one nomenclature (based on siemens), but one engineer told me that it was for Siemens, and had to change it back to AB.

I have seen drawings of some machines that came from europe (Germany in general), and noticed they idetinfied any module with a letter and the page number, and then refer to the inputs with a subindex.

Is there a standard to do that?

I know it's easier when you use the addressing on the PLC, but you have to change everything if you change the PLC or the i/o module address.

The first rule in wire numbering is: keep it simple.

The second rule is: make it consistent.

After that you are on your own.

The system that has worked best for me is to use the rung number where the wire is first shown on the electrical schematics. I increment rugs by ten. Every sheet of a drawing starts with a unique rung number.

Each time the wire passes through a device that may change its electrical state (a switch for example) the wire number changes by adding to the first number. (1010, then 1011, then 1012, etc.)

My "general" take here http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showpost.php?p=586965&postcount=32 read through the thread and search the forum, plenty of discussions on it.

In in the world of devices on a network, you won't always have line numbers or IO points to guide your way.

Thanks for your responces Tom & Paully.

Tom, we are using a system similar to yours.

Paully, it's challengin trying to put C1R01S00/00-1 in a wire label. We often use i/o points from festo (MPV-E-A08-M8) in that case, we we asing and ID and use the port number followed by the input/output address eg. 1X0 I:00/01 for AB or 1X0 I0.1 for Siemens.

We would like to avoid the use of phisical addresses, while trying to keep it simple and consistent.

At my work we do 2-4 digits for the page + 2 digits for the wire.

Pages < 100 are for main control cabinets, then we use the section number + 2 digits for machine sections.

So something like wire 0508 would start on page 5 in the MCP.
Something like 130501 would be section 13, page 1305.

Many years ago I learned to read schematics using German drawings.
It was a revelation when I cracked the code and I have followed their excellent standards ever since.

Gomez_ said:

At my work we do 2-4 digits for the page + 2 digits for the wire.

Pages < 100 are for main control cabinets, then we use the section number + 2 digits for machine sections.

So something like wire 0508 would start on page 5 in the MCP.
Something like 130501 would be section 13, page 1305.

Click to expand...

We typically do the same thing (page#/line #) but on a recent project we completed and submitted drawings, built and delivered the control panel, and then sent the completed drawings to the customer. They then off-handedly said "We'll be putting all of your drawings on to our title block and changing all of the page #'s and line #'s." Oh well, such is life.

Ronnie Sullivan said:

Many years ago I learned to read schematics using German drawings.
It was a revelation when I cracked the code and I have followed their excellent standards ever since.

Click to expand...

I would like to do the same, but i haven't cracked the code yet.

dogleg43 said:

We typically do the same thing (page#/line #) but on a recent project we completed and submitted drawings, built and delivered the control panel, and then sent the completed drawings to the customer. They then off-handedly said "We'll be putting all of your drawings on to our title block and changing all of the page #'s and line #'s." Oh well, such is life.

Click to expand...

At least you didn't have to do it. There are customers that have their own drawing layouts and title blocks as a standard, so any drawing must have it. And they required us to update all the drawings mechanical and electrical.

Loztos said:

At least you didn't have to do it. There are customers that have their own drawing layouts and title blocks as a standard, so any drawing must have it. And they required us to update all the drawings mechanical and electrical.

Click to expand...

We discussed drawings with them early in the project and nothing was said about changing title blocks.

tags can get out of hand sometimes I remember we had some spec'd as

PLC:SLOT:CHANNELEVICE:STATE
DESC


so for example
1:3:12:LSL:NC
Wet Well Low Level Switch

which tells you everything you need to know I guess but when points changed or wires got landed wrong or a card got added it was a nightmare.


oh and the manager was too cheap to buy an automated labeling machine everything had to be manual entered. the cost of labor alone would have bought a really nice labeler

Loztos said:

At least you didn't have to do it. There are customers that have their own drawing layouts and title blocks as a standard, so any drawing must have it. And they required us to update all the drawings mechanical and electrical.

Click to expand...

An integrator I previously worked for had a solution to this issue. They would utilize their standard drawing number scheme regardless of whose title block was used. The customer's drawing number would be in their title block but the integrator's drawing number would be in an opposite corner of the page. All drawings were saved under the integrator's file name. This met the customer's requirements while not compromising the wire numbering scheme.

labeledas said:

tags can get out of hand sometimes

which tells you everything you need to know I guess but when points changed or wires got landed wrong or a card got added it was a nightmare.


oh and the manager was too cheap to buy an automated labeling machine everything had to be manual entered. the cost of labor alone would have bought a really nice labeler

Click to expand...

That are some of the reasons why we want to change the way we are doing it. Some technicians spend the whole turn printing labels.

Loztos said:

That are some of the reasons why we want to change the way we are doing it. Some technicians spend the whole turn printing labels.

Click to expand...

We have customers that require us to use their numbering format which is [From XXX terminal/To YYY terminal]. These are sometimes 15 to 20 characters long. It not only takes time to print but the Brady cartridges we use are about $32 each and get used up quickly with numbers that long.

We also have used Panduit labels and they are about the same price. Have to include labor and material in the job quote.

bit off topic but I once worked on a piece of equipment were every control wire had the tag info printed right on the entire length of the wire insulation, keep in mind they made a lot of expensive identical units. thought it was cool but not overly practical for most applications.

I use page-line or pageline for all wires including inputs/outputs. The rackslotchan convention seems food until you have to page through pages and pages of a 60 pages to find it. With page line convention, you can go right to the exact place in the diagrams to find what you need.

104-23. Tells me page/drawing 104 line 23.