How do you use the Installation and Location fields on Wire Tags?
For the most part, the default setting is to only allow one unique instance of a wire number per project to avoid accidental duplication of the same wire tag on unconnected wires. This works for many cases, but there are some exceptions where users may want to have the same wire number on two completely separate, unconnected wires. For example, one such case would be where several copies of an identical panel or junction box are used in the same project. Each panel would have a completely separate unconnected set of wires, and they would all be identical to one another. So you might need five separate, unique instances of wire 100. The way we accomplish this is by using Wire Installations and Locations in the project settings.
Normally any device has an Installation, and a Location, and a Device Tag that make up the complete Device ID. So for example, Device CR1 is in the LOADER installation, and is in Location PANEL1. All parts of that relay device exist in that panel. The wire that connects to that device however, may have one end connected to that device and panel, but its other end may connect to a device in CONVEYOR Installation and Location JB1. Since one unique wire potential must have the same name throughout its whole length, no matter how many different branches it may have, it would typically be confusing to give the wire an Installation or Location value since there are two possible choices, CONVEYOR or LOADER. So for many users, the project settings are set to not show those fields and users only need to and are able to enter the value for Wire Tag. It is just wire 100 throughout the whole project no matter which box the device it connects to happens to be located.
In the case mentioned before however, the user would need to have five different wire 100’s in this project that are not connected to each other at all. They only exist in the five identical panels. So in this case you would want to change the project settings to enable the Installation and Location fields for wires in the project so that you can uniquely identify each separate wire and belonging to PANEL1 wire tag 100, PANEL2 wire tag 100, etc. Then you can accomplish the goal of having separate unconnected uniquely identified wire Tags in the same project.