EPLAN Integration

The EPLAN integration is included in the Pro+ and Enterprise plans. 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 AnyAutomation Studio.

Prerequisites

• A valid EPLAN Electric P8 installation on the same machine.
• An active EPLAN License Manager (ELM) session — the integration never holds a separate EPLAN license, it uses your existing one.
• A Pro+ or Enterprise license. EPLAN access is part of the tier and signed into your license; on a lower tier, invoking an EPLAN action (e.g. Open EPLAN Project) shows an upgrade dialog instead of opening the project.

Availability

EPLAN comes with the Pro+ and Enterprise plans — there is no separate purchase. The EPLAN tab is always visible in the activity bar on the left, but EPLAN actions only work on a qualifying license. After upgrading to Pro+ or Enterprise, sign out and sign back in (or trigger a license re-validate from the License panel) so the new entitlement is fetched.

Opening a Project

Click the EPLAN tab. The Project Explorer shows an Open EPLAN Project welcome link when no project is open (the action is also available from the Command Palette), and the Recent Projects view lists your recent EPLAN projects (most recent first). Pick a .elk file via the file picker or click a recent entry — AnyAutomation Studio 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.

A status-bar item in the bottom bar shows the live state:

• EPLAN: <project name> — bridge is running and a project is loaded.
• EPLAN: Connecting… — bridge is starting up or reconnecting.
• When no bridge is running, the status-bar item disappears entirely.

If the bridge drops mid-session, run Reconnect EPLAN Bridge from the Command Palette. Reconnect re-spawns the bridge and re-opens the previously open project automatically.

Browsing the Project

The Project Explorer is one of the EPLAN side-bar views (left), under the EPLAN tab, alongside Recent Projects and Function Properties. 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 Project Explorer toolbar Export Project… action first shows a format chooser with two formats:

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

After picking a format, a native Save dialog opens where you choose the target file 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, AnyAutomation Studio 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. You can also drag a selected function to reposition it on the page; the move is staged as a pending change.

Function Properties

Select a function in the Project Explorer or page preview to load it in the Function Properties panel (one of the EPLAN side-bar views, shown while a project is connected). You can edit a function's Article Number, Description and Mounting Location in the input boxes and click Apply to write the changes back. Other fields are shown read-only.

Edits made in the Function Properties panel and function moves in the page preview are staged as pending changes — a banner appears at the top of the Project Explorer with Save and Discard buttons to commit or roll back the staged edits.

Limitations in this version

• Structural 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. Direct-UI editing is limited to a function's Article Number, Description and Mounting Location (the Function Properties panel) and repositioning functions in the page preview; 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 AnyAutomation Studio.