Data isn’t just the driver for project planning and design. The Eplan Data Portal offers users access to high-quality product catalogues from a continually growing pool of renowned component manufacturers. The portal has now passed the mark of more than two million sets of static device data from around five hundred manufacturers. By using integrated configurators, users have far more than four million data sets at their fingertips. It is a nearly limitless and ever-increasing variety of components that can quickly and easily be integrated into projects – and the data quality is top notch.
More than four million device data sets available means an enormous amount of variety for projects. However, it is not just the quantity, but rather the quality of the data. “Quantity and quality go hand in hand for us,” says Eplan head of Content Quality Management, Rainer Ackermann. “We have high expectations for the quality and completeness of the data sets so that we can offer our users the greatest possible added value. That’s also why we continue to work on the Eplan Data Standard, or EDS.”
Manufacturers are also striving to meet these expectations of providing data sets that are as comprehensive as possible. This can include components for control cabinets, the 3D representation of a device, dimensions for drilling patterns, connection diagrams, and commercial data, device numbers and text descriptions.
Siemens Energy Automation and Building Technology Integrated
Siemens has been represented in the Data Portal with energy automation and building automation products for many years. Protection and automation devices from the Siprotec 5 family have now been added. Protection, automation and monitoring of the power grid are essential for a resilient network. “We need a secure and reliable power supply to establish a sustainable infrastructure and achieve our net-zero goals,” explains Stefan Werben, portfolio manager of Siprotec Medium Voltage Products at Siemens, adding: “We are pleased that we can now additionally support those customers who have chosen Eplan as their engineering platform to efficiently realise their projects in the construction, operation and expansion of plants.”
Sauter, a leading technology manufacturer in the field of building automation, system integration and building services, headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, and Freiburg, Germany, recently added to the Eplan Data Portal their ecos504/505 range of products for integrated room automation. “The positive feedback from our customers, as well as from within our own company, has motivated us to provide even more device data in the Eplan Data Standard,” says Sauter head of Marketing and Product management, Peter Schoenenberger.
Data depth ensured – even globally
A majority of the device data stored in the portal – 1,4 million out of more than 2 million components – are already available in the Eplan Data Standard. The EDS increases and guarantees the quality of the data sets so that they can be used efficiently, ideally from engineering through to production. Rittal has around 7300 devices stored in the Eplan Data Portal, 5600 of them in the Eplan Data Standard. These include control cabinets, control cabinet accessories, Blue e+ climate control devices and more. There are almost no limits globally speaking as well. If a device data set is created using ECLASS as a step file in an IEC format (the European standard), the Eplan software automatically also supports the NFPA device data set (the American standard). With this multi-standard support in one single data set, macros can also be saved in accordance with various standards that the Eplan Electric P8 software then recognises automatically. Furthermore, modifiable data from configurators and selectors of various manufacturers can also be used. These have linked their product catalogues directly with the Eplan Data Portal.
Development continues
Less visible, but at least as important, is the continued development of the data quality in the Eplan Data Portal. This year the focus is on preassembled cables. To ensure that machine cabling works as efficiently as possible with the new Eplan Cable proD solution, 3D data for the connectors is also being successively introduced. Technically speaking, functional improvements are also on the horizon. The Eplan Data Portal will be able to be directly integrated into local device management with the upcoming release of the new Eplan Platform 2026. This will again even further simplify selecting components and accelerate project planning and design work.
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