Customizing and Creating Family Tags

Alright. So fixture tags are extremely customizable, and we're gonna go over how you can adjust some of these features to make it look how you want it to. So for instance, this is a lighting fixture tag. And, actually, if I go up here to, for example, this one over here, it's got the fixture tag, the panel name dash circuit, and then the zone ID. And let's say you wanna change something, like, may maybe you wanna flip flop it.

Maybe you wanna do circuit first, then the type, then the zone. And then in circuit, instead of a dash, you want a a slash. All of that is customizable, and all you have to do is go ahead and right click on one of these tags and preferably do it in your warehouse so that you don't have to you know, that you you do in your warehouse, and then you can copy it from there to your projects from that point forward. So we're gonna go ahead and right click. We're gonna head.

We're gonna edit the family, and then you can see this is what we call a, like, a tag. So it's light fixture tag. And the benefit of using a tag versus just a text box is that it reads the properties from the fixture itself and also here. Like, the benefit is it it reads the property from the fixture, and then if you move the fixture, you see how it it goes with it so you don't lose the text box. That's why I'm usually a big fan of using tags over text.

Alright. Anyways, back to this tag. You can see that this tag is made up of multiple pieces. And if you go over here to the label button and you hit edit, you can see that the parameters are all in here. And if there is no value in the parameter, it basically just shows up as blank.

So if I were to kinda go back here, for example so this is this tag has the family type circuit and zone. But if I don't make a zone out of this, the zone simply doesn't show up. But if for some reason I do make a zone, so, like, if I make a switch, then select switch to be this one, and then assign the switch an ID. So, like, if I type in letter a, all of a sudden, you see there's a letter a that just pops up. And let's see.

Switch system, edit system. If I add another fixture, you can see now that the a pops up here. So that's how the tag behaves, and, of course, you can change it how you want to. So back here, you can see that oh, there's actually a nightlight feature too. So if I click on this and I do nightlight, you can see how it adds, like, an end to it.

So there's a lot of cool features built into the tag, and you can actually go ahead and change all that. So back over here, if you click on the tag and hit edit, you can see that this window allows you to either bring in more properties or take some out. So, like, for example, I don't know, if you wanted to include the I don't know what's what other things are useful here, like your wattage for actually, I think a parent load is probably more accurate. So, yeah, a parent load. So just for demonstration.

If you click on apparent load and click this arrow over, it adds it to the tag. And then conversely, if you click on the thing you wanna remove and click this red arrow, it removes it. So here, I'm just gonna put the apparent load over here just for demonstration, and now you just added another parameter that you can show in your tag. If you go up here, you can see how there's the the parameter name just obviously tells you what the parameter is. Spaces is how much space before or, I guess, in between the parameter.

So if you wanted to maybe put, like, a lot of space between a word, like, let's say it's the lighting type, and then this is the night light, so the n. If I didn't want it right up against the type, you can put, like, you know, a a number in here, like a space, one space. And then if I hit okay, if I load it in overwrite, and if I turn on the nightlight, you see how it adds a space in between the type and the letter n. So you can customize that to be, you know, closer or further apart. K?

Gonna edit the family again. Come back in here. I'm gonna take the space back out. Zero is good. And then the sample value can be really whatever you want. I mean, really, I could probably just put an actual n in there. The sample value here would be, like, you know, something like that. Prefix and suffix is I mean, it's pretty self explanatory here. The if you wanted to put something before your type value, I'll type it in here. Let's say, you wanted to put, like like, a number or something or maybe it it's always l.

Like, all your light types always have to start with an l. Okay. Then put a prefix in here, or maybe they end with something. You can add a suffix as well. Alright. The break column is how you control if it goes to the next line. So if you check the breaks, basically, it'll say, I'm gonna take the type, and then I'm gonna put the letter n after it, and then it's gonna go to the next line. So that's what the break is. And then next line will be panel dash. You see how I have the suffix here? Let's say instead of dash, let's say you wanna do a slash. You could do that. And then after the panel name, I don't wanna break. Instead, I want the circuit number. So put the circuit number in here and then do a break, and then that's your third line.

So then now you got your switch ID, which is just switch ID for me. And then let's say I actually wanna break and then put the parent load and then the suffix. Maybe I'll put, like, VA or something just to label the load better. Okay. So that's how you update your your tag, then we're gonna load it in. We're not gonna save it. Overwrite, and there you go. So now I just changed a couple things. I changed my panel to instead of using a dash, I now use a slash, and then I added the apparent load and oh, apparently, apparent load does not need a suffix because the value already goes through here. Okay.

So that's nice to know. So we're going to edit the family, go back to edit label, and just take out VA. That was kind of redundant. Overwrite. And there you go. Okay? So, yeah, you can do quite a few things with this. This is the same principle for if you wanted to change the, like a like a receptacle tag or something. So for instance, we're gonna go over here to the receptacle. Same thing.

If I were to click and edit family, you could see that this label just takes in the panel and the circuit number. And like I said, the like, some some firms use a slash, some firms use a dash. So it's kind of all up to how you wanna do it. And, there are people that just want, like, the circuit number without the panel. So you can see how I have a whole bunch of them in here.

So how you make a different one of these, it's pretty simple. Let's say you wanna make one that's completely different. It's not just a circuit tag or a comment or description or one of these. Let's say you wanna make one that's completely unique to yourself. So what I would do is, actually, I would start with an existing tag that's kinda similar to what you want, and then we're gonna hit edit family.

Then go in here and then change whatever you want with this. Let's say you wanted to include the comments and, you know, description or something. And then over here, we're going to do a save as. So it's important to do a save as because you wanna call it something else. So let's say you wanted to call this I'm just gonna call this, like, electrical test tag or something.

And then once you hit save, you can see now this is called electrical test tag, and this will be tagged for electrical fixtures. You you can also tag other things too. I think you can sorry. You can go up here to this button, family categories and parameters, and you can pick it to be tagged something else. Maybe you wanted to tag the equipment instead of fixtures. You can change that in here. In this case, I'm just gonna keep it here. This is how you make, like, all different other tags. You can make lighting tags, fire alarm tags, whatever you need to. Alright.

And then, you know, basically load it. Do you wanna save changes? Yes. You wanna save changes for this one because it's a different family. And now we're loading it into here. So if I go to the receptacle and I wanna tag this, let's see. Tag by category, and I can click on this, and you can see how it's a it's just a test tag. And it has if I had what was it? The comment section? If I go back in here, it'd be like, testing here.

I'll apply. You can see how it adds comp comment. I believe description is, like, in here somewhere. I hit okay. There you go. So that's how you make your own special custom tags if you wanted to. And like I said, you can do all kinds of prefix, suffix, breaks, spaces, etcetera, as you want to in here. And you can actually get pretty creative. Let's say you want, like, description up here and, I don't know, you wanna describe this circuit in a certain way all the time. So design just make all kinds of custom tags as you want them.

And if you wanna delete one, just go ahead and right click on one of the tags. I think, usually, first, I I would actually go and select an entire prod like, select all the tags in a certain project and then change it to something else first so that I don't lose the information or I don't lose the tag if I don't want it. But then to delete it out of the project, you wanna go right click, find in project browser, and then you can right click on this tag to delete it. And it'll tell you how many instances will be deleted. So right now, I just have the one, and I do want it gone.

So I'm a hit okay, and it's gone. So that's how you go and make all your custom tags however you want to or even just adjust the tags that are in here. Tags are a big part of making a good set of drawings. So, hopefully, this will be useful, and you can kinda design all your tags exactly how you want for your warehouse.