Exporting the diagram

A finished single-line diagram — SLD — leaves the application by three routes. All three write the same sheet, frame and all; what differs is what the receiving end can do with it.

The diagram page in the PDF report

The PDF report carries the diagram automatically. You do not export it separately: build or auto-build the diagram, then export the report, and the diagram is written in as its own page. Every page of the report is A3 landscape, so the diagram page and the layout drawing come out on the same paper.

Screenshot pendingexports/pdf-page-sld.png

Report diagram page

What it shows

The diagram page of the report, showing the diagram on its sheet frame.

How to get there

Build or auto-build a diagram before exporting, then open that page of the report.

The page sits third in the report, after the engineering drawing and the summary and before the bill of materials. The full page order, and what each page carries, is on The PDF report.

One behaviour to know about: if the diagram fails to draw, that page is skipped silently and the rest of the report is still produced. A report is never lost because of a problem with the diagram. The consequence for you is that a missing diagram page is not announced — so if the diagram matters to the document, open the report and confirm the page is there.

A standalone PDF of the sheet

⬇ Export SLD to PDF writes the sheet as a PDF on its own.

This is the review copy. It carries the border, the zone grid, the legend band and the title block, so a reviewer can mark it up against a zone reference and hand it back, and it needs nothing but a PDF reader at the far end.

The sheet is written at A3 proportions. For a large plant the physical paper size grows — A3, then A1, then A0 — while those proportions hold, so a long chain is printed on bigger paper rather than being squeezed into A3.

A CAD drawing

⬇ Export SLD to DWG writes the sheet as a drawing file for a drafting team.

Which format you actually get

A .dxf file is always written. It is converted to .dwg only when the ODA File Converter is installed on the machine; with no converter present, the export stays .dxf.

So expect one of two outcomes, and check which one you got:

Neither is a failure. .dxf is a CAD interchange format that every serious CAD program reads, so a .dxf export is usable as it stands — and if your drawing office wants .dwg specifically, converting one file at their end is a smaller job than debugging an export. Look at the extension of the file you produced before sending it, so that nobody downstream is surprised.

The symbols come across as geometry, not as a picture

This is the point of the CAD route. Each symbol's shape is written into the drawing file as real CAD entities, and each is rotated about its own centre exactly as it sits on screen. The result is a drawing a drafter can select, move, copy and edit — not an image of your screen dropped into a drawing frame.

Practically: the diagram you see is the diagram they open. A transformer placed already rotated to line up with the bus arrives rotated the same way, and a symbol you turned with ⟲ 90° or a typed angle arrives at that angle.

The same holds for a symbol you traced yourself. An imported image symbol is stored as outlines rather than as a picture, which is why it too exports as real geometry. See Importing diagrams and custom symbols.

The sheet frame comes across too

The export writes the sheet frame first and the diagram on top of it. The outer border, the inner frame, the zone grid, the legend band and the title block are therefore all in the CAD file, in the same positions they occupy on screen.

That matters more than it sounds. A drafting team receiving the diagram alone would have to drop it into their own frame and re-letter the zones; receiving the framed sheet, they can work on the drawing itself. Anything you typed into the title block with Text travels with it — and anything you left blank arrives blank.

Exporting is not saving

All three routes produce a document for somebody else. None of them is how you keep the diagram.

The diagram is part of the session, and the session is saved as a project file. A saved project holds the inputs, the layout, the hand edits, the diagram and the materials list together, so reopening it brings the diagram back exactly as you left it — editable, on the same sheet. Save the project as well as exporting, or the next revision starts from the PDF you sent out. See Projects.

Which route to use when

If you are unsure, send the standalone PDF for agreement and the CAD file for work. The PDF settles what the diagram says; the drawing file is what somebody builds on.

Before you export

Where to go next