EPLAN Integration

The EPLAN integration is an optional, separately licensed add-on. It connects the application to a local installation of EPLAN Electric P8 (2025.0.3 or compatible) so you can browse and export EPLAN projects without leaving the manager.

Prerequisites

• A valid EPLAN Electric P8 installation on the same machine.
• An active EPLAN License Manager (ELM) session — the add-on never holds a separate EPLAN license, it uses your existing one.
• The EPLAN add-on enabled on your manager license. The add-on is granted by the licensing back-end and is visible under License → Add-ons as a green "Active" badge. Without the add-on, the EPLAN tab is hidden.

Enabling the Add-on

The add-on is purchased separately. Once granted to your account, sign out and sign back in (or trigger a license re-validate from the License panel) so the new entitlement is fetched. The card under License → Add-ons → EPLAN flips from "Not active" to "Active" and the EPLAN tab appears in the activity bar on the left.

Opening a Project

Click the EPLAN tab. The workspace shows your recent EPLAN projects (most recent first) and an Open EPLAN project… button. Pick a .elk file via the file picker or click a recent entry — the manager spawns a hidden EPLAN bridge process the first time and then opens the project.

If you have more than one EPLAN variant installed (Electric P8, ProPanel, Preplanning…), a one-time picker lets you select which variant to use. The choice is remembered between sessions; only one bridge / variant runs per application session because of the EPLAN license-server constraint.

The bridge status indicator in the workspace header shows the live state:

• Connected — bridge is running and a project is loaded.
• Connecting… — bridge is starting up or reconnecting.
• Disconnected — no bridge running.

If the bridge crashes mid-session, a banner appears with a Reconnect button. Reconnect re-spawns the bridge and re-opens the previously open project automatically.

Browsing the Project

The right pane is the Project Explorer. It groups the project content into two top-level categories:

• Pages — every drawing page in the project, with identifier, document type and description.
• Functions — main functions extracted from the schematics, with tag (e.g. =A1+K2-K1), the parent page identifier and any linked article number.

Type into the filter box at the top to filter both categories by a substring match across all visible columns. The category headers update with the live match count.

Exporting

The toolbar Export… button opens a dialog with two formats:

• PXF (EPLAN exchange) — the lossless EPLAN exchange format, suitable for re-import into EPLAN.
• PDF — flat PDF of all drawing pages.

Pick a target file via Browse… and click Export. Long exports run with an indeterminate progress indicator — the EPLAN engine does not emit per-page progress in this version. The exported file lands at the path you picked.

Recent Projects

Every successful project open is added to the recent-projects list (max 10 visible, 50 stored). Click an entry to re-open it; the small × button removes a single entry without affecting the EPLAN file on disk. If the file has moved or been deleted, the manager removes the dead entry from the list with a status hint.

Page Preview

Double-click a page in the EPLAN tree to open it in the preview tab. The preview supports mouse-wheel zoom, middle-click pan, and a crosshair cursor that follows the pointer across the page surface. The page renders on a white sheet so the page border is visible at any zoom level.

Limitations in this version

• Authoring is MCP-tool driven, not direct UI. Page and function create/delete/rename, symbol insert, parts-list/PDF/label report generation are exposed via AI Chat or external MCP clients only — pick the EPLAN Engineer agent in the chat agent picker for that; the standard agent answers read questions about the currently open project. The workspace itself remains read-only plus export from the toolbar; tag synchronisation with TIA is not yet supported.
• One EPLAN variant per session. Because EPLAN's License Manager only licenses one Electric P8 session per machine, switching variants requires restarting the manager.

If you do not see the EPLAN tab even after the add-on appears as "Active" on your license, restart the manager once so the activity bar picks up the new entitlement.