Designer71

I have a copy of the book as well, and have had the pleasure of actually using ePlan P8 on a few projects. I was also fortunate enough to recieve a week of training from ePlan. As an electrical design platform, I'm convinced it's superior to AutoCAD (in any of it's forms). There is some difficulty in gaining acceptace for the product because of the the cost and fears that it would be difficult to learn and use. That's unfortunate. Having the handbook is nice, but you'd be cheating yourself if you don't get to see the product in action. I'd recommend anyone reading this to attend a workshop or request one from ePlan in their area.

Give them a call. They sell that book, I believe. You can find the phone number on the EPlan website, I think. Let me know if you need a direct link. Also, I would bring questions to them over the phone, or post them here. Youre not totally alone! :P Good luck!

You're right. It's a Lambourghini all right. I'm still learning to use it, but quickly see it's advantages. I'll try to help as best as I can. But you might need to give one question at a time. You might be able to convince your boss to purchase the EPLAN Electric P8 Reference Handbook. (ISBN: 978-1-56990-432-9) It's worth a try! Good luck.

They have a 30 day trial CD with demo videos as well. It's here: http://www.eplanusa.com/products/eplan-ele...free-trial.html Enjoy!

Sorry for the delay. I still don't have email notification. I think advanced questions like yours should be directed here: http://forum.eplan.info/en/ They are much more experienced than I am. I still use mrplc, but not for eplan stuff. Cheers

Certainly, I'm not an expert yet, but I am hoping for official training soon, and have learned a fair amount on my own. Ask away! Travis

I agree. Looking at the money that's been spent so far on training for AutoCAD electrical and comparing it to the rusults we have seen, it's pretty sad. We are struggling to make it work. Specifically, we are struggling to get the functionality from AutoCAD electrical that already exists in EPLAN P8, right out of the box. BTW: I go for official EPLAN training soon. My internal customers (and boss) are liking what they see.

Hi Kolonel, Take a look on the EPLAN site, and look for the Getting Started guide. If you have trouble finding it, just give them a call. I've always found the people there to be very nice and responsive. The guide is translated from German, so it has some minor issues. They may have fixed that by now. My copy of the guide is a few months old. I was scheduled for official EPLAN training, but my company put a freeze on business travel for now. I've taught myself how to use it well enough by using the Getting Started guide. But, I've also been asking questions of tech support at EPLAN when I run into trouble. Good luck and have fun! Designer71

Thanks Luc, I may not be ready for anything fancy yet, but I'm learning my way around pretty quickly. One of the great things is that everything is so organized. It seems like I have ultimate control over my current project (over 1000 sheets), and the interface is very forgiving. It almost "knows" what I'm trying to do sometimes. I'm really impressed. I also wanted to point out that to this day I've still had no crashes. That's unparalelled! I deliberately tried to create an error message by putting a terminal point on top of another terminal point. I was informed that such action is not allowed. Haha! Duh! Apparently it is watching to prevent me from doing something stupid. Whats all for now from this P8 newbie.

Try changing the extension to .elk, .ell, or one of the other extensions P8 typically works with. I'm not sure why your project has a .p extension. Do you know who manipulated the file before you? Hope that helps. Designer71

I'm getting started with EPLAN P8. I like what I see so far. I've been able to change part numbers across an entire project (hundreds of pages) with a few clicks. The interface seems very logical and I havent had any crashes at all. That may seem like an odd observation, but dont get me started on the troubles I've had with Autocad Electrical. Ouch! Anyway, I hope to be able to converse with other P8 users and learn more.