
Here are 58 reasons to consider this add-on - fully compatible with AutoCAD Electrical 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and beyond. Hello to many things you wish Autodesk would have included or fixed in AutoCAD Electrical by now! But enhanced with Spatial Business Systems Substation Design Suite™ of powerful, purpose-built tools riding on top of AcadE, it becomes even better! Welcome to Spatial Business System’s SDS Tools for electrical controls design (intro video here). The Autodesk® AutoCAD® Electrical software (AcadE) is great for plant, machine, and substation electrical controls design. If you like AcadE, you’ll really like this. ( Note: the following is one of the things I’ve been deeply involved with over the last ten years. Here is the key spot in the swap_wdm.lsp file where you would likely insert your enhancements: Save your modified file in a support file folder that is “higher” in the search path sequence that the original swap_wdm.lsp (so that your modified version will be found first and executed). Make a copy of this file (same name) and slightly enhance it to transfer the Xdata from the old WD_M to the newly inserted WD_M. This swap_wdm.lsp file is installed into folder “c:\program files\autodesk\autocad 20xx\acade\support\en-us\”.

Like the wdio.lsp PLC I/O utility, it is installed and executed in full source mode to allow user customization of the WD_M / WD_PNLM block swap commands. This tool is driven from an Autodesk supplied file swap_wdm.lsp provided in plain AutoLISP format. There is a way to do this. The solution is to just enhance the existing AcadE AESWAPWDM tool’s source code.

Unfortunately, this AESWAPWDM tool doesn’t provide a means for a mass transfer of Xdata tags/values from the old WD_M block to the swapped-in new version. But there may be times when you need to use the AcadE AESWAPWDM tool to update a project’s WD_M block instances.

The block is always there on the drawing if it’s AcadE-smart. The WD_M block instance is a handy place to store and retrieve Xdata values for your custom AcadE applications.
