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.
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.
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.
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:
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.