Black Boxes in SOLIDWORKS Electrical

Black boxes in SOLIDWORKS Electrical schematics are a very simple and easy to use. A Black box is a generic schematic symbol which can be used to represent any device or apparatus, this can act as a time saving feature. Not only this but it can also be used as a space saver, when an engineer knows that a symbol needs to placed but is unsure which one will be needed. Default Black boxes (or straight out of the box if you will!) can be used to perform this task. They can be drawn over a number of wires, accepted and all the connection points for those wires will be created.        

Additional Connection points can be created on a right click too.

SOLIDWORKS Electrical keeps track of Black Boxes as components. Which means that this will show up on Bills of Materials and Manufacturer information can be associated. Based on the connection points and any other properties that need to be assigned, users are able to assign component information to the black box, either by using existing manufactured components or creating their own.          

To create your own black box manufactured component with the correct circuit details, access to the manufactured parts library is needed. In here we can add in our own properties to a black box part and add in the correct amount of terminal and circuits to match to the black box we have already created. These are then saved within the library for future black box selections.      

Black Boxes are effortless to edit to produce symbols with specific attributes with very little setup time. Once this has been done this saves further time for future projects. 

Olly Smith 

Applications Engineer

30/01/2015