Terminals and Wires

A Terminal is a simple type of electrical connector that connects two or more wires to a single connection point. The connection may be temporary as for portable equipment, or it may require a tool for assembly and removal, or it may be a permanent electrical joint between two wires or devices.

Terminals can be registered and managed in IFS/Asset Design. Connection Points and IO Cards are the usual candidates for possessing terminals. If a Design Object or Design Part is to have terminals, its respective class must have the Can Have Terminals class property.

Terminal Registration

Manual Terminal Registration

Terminals can be created manually through the Design Object Terminals window. Eligible design objects belonging to respective plants can be selected here and have a Terminal ID, which is unique within the selected design object, registered to them. In addition, the Type, Grouping and Connection Level of the terminals can also be registered.

Defining a value for the Maximum Number of Wires results in an upper limit of possible wire connections. This is an optional definition where a null value stands for an infinite number of connections.

Updating Design Object Terminals from Design Part Terminals

The suggested and convenient method to create terminals for a design object is to create them once for the design part and then update the object from the related design part. In order for this to happen, the Update Terminals from Part property should be defined on the respective class. In this way, terminals can be easily registered on multiple design objects updating Type, Group, Connection Level and Max No. of Wires simultaneously. Signals, however, will not be added through the design part.

When design parts have their terminals added or changed at a later phase, it can be advantageous to also add or update the terminals on the associated design objects. This addition or update is performed automatically as long as the previous class property exists. It is also possible to skip the automatic updates on a particular design object(s) by manually disabling the update property on the design objects.

Managing Terminals

Adding, Changing, and Removing Signals

A signal can only be related to a design object terminal along with its Potential value. Both signal and potential are then available to be copied to other destinations as and when the wire connections are established. Removing and changing the terminal-signal relationship is always possible. Changes on a selected terminal will affect all other connected terminals.

Based on the signal relation, terminals can be divided and queried for as follows:

• Used - displays the terminals with one or more connected signals.
• Free - displays the terminals without connected signals.

Handling Wire Connections

Wire connections are established on the Design Object Wires window, between valid From and To Objects. The From and To Terminals of the respective design objects are listed in the List of Values. Only the terminals for which the established number of connections does not exceed the value for Maximum Number of Wires are displayed here. The availability validation of terminals will be carried out if a manual entry is done.