This beta covers work completed since the July 2026 production release, and is updated as new beta builds go out. It is available as both the FireCAD Add-in for AutoCAD and FireCAD Standalone.
Important: This is a beta build. Back up your projects before installing, and report anything that looks wrong so it can be fixed before general release.
The headline addition is the Submittal Builder, immediately below. Most of the rest of this release addresses how FireCAD handles assemblies - cabinets with cards and modules configured inside them. If you work with multi-module cabinets, the two connection items that follow it change behavior you have almost certainly worked around by hand.
Submittal Builder - Every Data Sheet, Compiled Into One PDF
The headline addition in this beta. It gathers the product data sheet for every part in your project and compiles them into a single PDF: a cover page, a table of contents with real page ranges, then every sheet in order.
Where to find it: the FireCAD(R) Tools ribbon tab, Reports panel, Submittal Book.
On the command line it is ATCREATE_SUBMITTAL.
It shows you what it found before it builds anything
A pre-flight list opens first, with every part and the sheet it resolved to - a manufacturer link, a local file, or Missing in red.
From there you can
- Browse... to point a missing part at a PDF on your disk or network. That path is saved into the project device catalog, so it sticks for later submittals and for anyone else on the project.
- untick Include to leave a part out of this book, and
- Add Parts... to pull in catalog parts that are not placed in the drawing - accessories and spares the submittal needs but the plan does not show.
Parts still missing a sheet are skipped and itemized in the summary at the end, so nothing disappears quietly.
The book it produces
Pick where to save it and FireCAD builds the PDF. The contents page lists each sheet with the pages it occupies, counted from the first data sheet so the numbering matches what a reviewer sees. Parts that share a data sheet are grouped onto one row.
This is new, and worth a hard look - particularly whether the sheets it resolves for your own catalog are the ones you would have picked by hand.
Choose Which Card or Input a Circuit Connects To
When you connect a circuit to an assembly that has more than one compatible input, FireCAD used to pick one for you. Which module inside the cabinet got the connection was effectively arbitrary, and there was no way to redirect it short of connecting, checking, disconnecting, and trying again.
Connecting now opens a picker listing every free input, so you choose the one you mean.
Pick up an assembly once and you get all of it. Select a cabinet with four modules and the picker opens with a row for each of its free inputs, every one ready to connect. You do not select the cabinet four times to fill four inputs - those inputs are not visible until the picker opens, so there was no way to know how many times to select it.
General-purpose inputs come pre-declined. A terminal cabinet usually exposes junction passthrough and surge inputs alongside its real modules. Those are offered but arrive with Do Not Connect already ticked, so laying a cabinet out in full does not quietly connect things you did not mean. Tick them on if you want them. If an assembly has nothing but general-purpose inputs free, the first one stays enabled rather than leaving you with a dialog whose Connect button does nothing.
Each row shows the card being connected, the circuit, the connection type, and an Input list of every available input in the cabinet:
Details worth knowing:
- The picker only appears when there is a real choice. A device with a single free input still connects silently, exactly as before.
- Do Not Connect is a checkbox on every row. Ticking it skips that connection and hands its input back to the other rows. It works even on a row with a single input, where the Input list is greyed out because there is nothing to choose between.
- Inputs already in use are listed but greyed out, labeled with the circuit occupying them, so you can see the whole cabinet's wiring at a glance.
- Cross-exclusion is live. An input chosen on one row greys out on the others; freeing it re-enables it immediately.
- General-purpose inputs sort last. Junction-passthrough and surge-protection style inputs sort below the circuit's specific types, so a junction input never wins over the module you actually meant.
- Plain multi-input devices are unchanged. For something like a junction box, selecting the device once per connection still works the way it always has.
Fixed since the last beta: ticking Do Not Connect on every row for a device used to connect it anyway - the dialog reported no choice for that device and the connect step fell back to picking the first input. Declining now means declining.
The picker applies to Connect, Branch, Insert, and Relocate.
Modules Inside a Cabinet Now Keep Their Own Identity
Reported by a customer: a SIGA-MCT2 dual-address module configured inside a cabinet consumed only one SLC address instead of two.
The cause was that for a module inside an assembly, the connection belongs to the cabinet entity, and FireCAD read device properties from that entity - so the module's own catalog row was never consulted. Anything defined on the module rather than the cabinet was therefore wrong or missing.
That resolution is now correct everywhere it is used:
| Area | What changed |
|---|---|
| Addressing | Address quantity and sub-address start come from the module, so dual-address modules consume the right number of addresses |
| Circuit loading | Each input circuit of a multi-card cabinet carries only its own card's load, and voltage chains per card |
| Reports and battery calculation | Assembly-card rows carry the module's part number, symbol, and exclusion flags, and group with directly placed devices of the same part |
| Project Circuits palette | The Connected Device List and Usage Summary show the module's part number and address count, not the cabinet's |
| Potter export | Points carry the module's point and function types and sub-address slots |
| Validation | Unconnected-input checks run per card against each card's required connection quantity |
Below, a SIGA-MCT2 inside a cabinet correctly consumes two addresses - the Usage Summary
reads Used: 2, the Connected Device List shows the module's part number, and the device
label is the range L2-M376-M377:
Note: If a project already contains dual-address modules inside cabinets, their addresses will shift when you open it in this build, because they now consume their full address range. Re-check any address assignments you documented from a previous version.
Copy Devices With Their Circuit Connections
Copying devices previously carried over device settings but not circuit connections, leaving you to reconnect everything by hand.
When a Validate that you started detects copied devices, FireCAD now offers to copy their connections too:
- If you copied field devices but not their panel, the copies join the same circuits the originals were on.
- If you copied the panel as well, its circuits are recreated on the new panel with the copied devices attached.
Copying one selection to several locations is handled correctly - each placement is grouped by its offset, so every panel copy gets its own circuits with the right devices. Joined devices are appended in their original order, so each paste lands as a contiguous, correctly ordered block.
New: you can answer this once. The prompt now carries a Don't ask again for this project checkbox. Whichever button you click becomes the standing answer for that project - tick it and click Yes and copied devices always bring their connections; tick it and click No and they never do. Dismissing the dialog without answering, with the X or Escape, records nothing.
To start being asked again, set Options > Circuits > Copy Device Connections When Validating back to Ask each time. That same setting is where you change a standing answer from Always to Never without waiting for the prompt to reappear.
When a standing answer is used, FireCAD says so on the command line and names the setting, so a project that silently stopped copying connections is one line away from explaining itself.
The answer applies only to a Validate you started. Automatic validations - on drawing open, or after drawing - never prompt and never copy connections, whatever the setting says. Copied wirepath entities refresh on the next Update Wire Labels.
Also fixed: copying an assembly could leave the copy with no components after validating. Copied assemblies now keep their full component configuration.
Exclude From Report Now Applies to Speaker Schedule and Point-to-Point
Reported by a customer: devices flagged Exclude From Report - junction boxes on speaker circuits, in their case - still appeared as rows in the Speaker Schedule report and its summary export. An audit found the modern Point-to-Point report had the same gap.
Both reports now honor the flag, and so do their summary exports.
Below, a Point-to-Point report for a NAC circuit carrying six horns and one outdoor strobe.
Before the strobe's part is flagged, it is listed as N1-07:
With Exclude From Report set on that part, its row is gone:
Exclusion is display-only. The device is not listed, but circuit length and the electrical math are unchanged: an excluded device's length, resistance, and voltage drop from the previous device fold into the next device that is shown. In the report above, every total is identical with and without the excluded row - total circuit length 107 ft, total circuit resistance 0.657 ohms, end of line voltage 20.25 V, voltage drop 0.73 percent. Reports that work in lump sums, such as Decibel Loss and Battery Calculation, have no from-previous columns and were already correct.
Missing and erased devices drop out of these reports the same way.
Note: Reports already placed in a drawing that contain excluded devices will flag as OUT OF DATE until you regenerate them. That is expected.
Your Wirepath Label Style Edits Now Stick
A regression introduced alongside the new Format Wirepath Labels options meant that every label refresh discarded your edits to the AMTS MLeader styles - leader line type, arrowhead, and text attachment were reset and pushed back onto every leader in the drawing. Customers who had set their own leader style found it reverting to a framed label with a filled arrow on every update.
The MLeader styles (AMTSMLeaderStyle and AMTSMLeaderStyle2) are now the source of truth.
Edit them and your changes persist across label refreshes.
Only two properties remain app-controlled, and both are the dialog's own checkboxes:
- Frame Wirepath Label Text
- Mask Wirepath Label Text - now correctly applied on every refresh, where previously it only took effect when a style was first created
Text size, arrow size, landing gap, and dogleg continue to track the wire label height project setting.
Clearer Failure When a Project Name Is Too Long
Creating a project whose name exceeded 100 characters failed with a database error and rolled
the whole thing back, with nothing to indicate that the name was the problem. Long names
also risked hitting the Windows maximum path length, since the project name becomes the
.atpx filename.
The Project Creation Wizard now validates name length as you type and blocks Create with a message that says what is wrong:
All Project Properties fields are capped to their database column widths, so the same class of failure cannot occur elsewhere.
Disconnect Now Follows Your Selection
Two disconnect problems are fixed.
Disconnecting from the connected-device list ignored which rows you picked. It removed the device's most recent connection instead, whichever row you had selected. On a cabinet holding one connection per module that meant the wrong module came off almost every time. Selected rows are now the rows that get disconnected.
The Disconnect command only ever removed one connection per device. Selecting the same device three times removed one connection, not three. Select it three times now and three connections come off, newest first. Select it more times than it has connections left and the extra picks are simply ignored.
Deleting Orphaned Data Now Shows You What It Will Delete
Delete Orphans no longer deletes anything without showing you the list first.
The command still does what it always did - it clears out devices that were erased from the drawing, along with the circuits, device types and addressing attached to them - but it now opens with everything it is about to remove, so you can check it against what you meant.
- Panels and assemblies are listed by name, one per line, and marked. They are the entries whose deletion costs the most, because their circuits and addressing go with them.
- Modules that originate circuits are grouped by part number with a note saying so. A project can hold hundreds of control and relay modules, and listing each one would bury the handful of cabinets that actually need a decision.
-
Everything else is grouped by part number with a count -
27 x PR2RLEDrather than twenty-seven lines. - Untick anything you want to keep. Unticked entries survive the purge with their circuits and configuration intact, so the next Validate can bring them back if the device returns to the drawing. Use Select None to review a project without deleting anything.
If you erase every device in a drawing and run Delete Orphans expecting the project emptied, that still works exactly as before - confirm once and it is done.
A backup is written first, every time. Before deleting anything, FireCAD copies the project
into its backups folder. If that copy cannot be written, the purge stops and deletes nothing
rather than proceeding unprotected.
Redrawing Wirepaths No Longer Deletes Devices
Update Wirepaths, Optimize Circuits and Update Circuit Paths used to clear out erased devices, circuits and panel configurations as part of preparing to redraw. They now remove only the segments they are about to rebuild.
Nothing about redrawing a line should be able to remove a panel, and in one case it did: an assembly left behind by an earlier panel replacement took the project's circuits with it when a routine operation cleaned up. Devices erased from the drawing now stay in the project, marked missing, until you deliberately purge them.
They are still kept out of the redrawn wirepaths - they simply are not deleted to achieve it.
Wire fill counts are more accurate as a result. A device erased from the drawing used to keep contributing a conductor to wire fill until a purge removed it. It no longer does, so on drawings with erased devices you may see fill and conduit percentages drop to their correct values.
The Reports Menu Is Grouped
The Reports dropdown went from 26 flat entries to three top-level items - Device Legend, Bill Of Material, and Submittal Book - plus four cascades: Circuit Calculations, Summaries, Schedules & Legends, and Export to Excel. Every command is unchanged and still called what it was called; only the nesting is new. The ribbon is deliberately untouched.
Report Changes
Excel reports now render outside AutoCAD. All reports and exports run through a bundled
report writer. This fixes the System.IO.Compression.Brotli failure that blocked exports
entirely on some machines. Smaller visible differences: exported files no longer leak an
internal placement marker, wire resistance and speaker wattage print trimmed (4.89, not
4.89000000), and project title lines capitalize consistently.
Report options moved into the report dialogs. Battery standby, alarm and derating values, the panel-summary calculation method, decimal precisions and Ignore Spare Circuits now live in the settings pane of the report that uses them. The Options editor's report section is down to "Add Reports and Risers to Current Drawing" and the wire overage percentage. The separate Include-Existing-in-BOM and Include-Existing-in-Legend settings are retired - those reports follow the Include Existing Parts checkbox in their own dialog now.
"Generate Legacy Reports" is gone, along with the pre-Excel report tier behind it, where battery calculation and panel summary were broken. If you had it switched on you now get the current formats.
Circuit Hierarchy exports work again. Export Circuit Hierarchy Table failed for everyone with an "Invalid object name" error, and the plain Circuit Hierarchy export had a blank Device Label column. Both are fixed.
The first-run report error is gone - the once-per-session "vw_CircuitData contains a self-reference" message no longer appears.
Intermittent 15 to 45 Second Freezes Fixed
Placing a device, refreshing labels or opening a device list could occasionally stall for 15 to 45 seconds, then run instantly a few minutes later, with no relation to project size. The local database engine was releasing its memory back to Windows under memory pressure and having to rebuild. FireCAD now holds a working memory floor through the session. If you have had unpredictable pauses you could never reproduce on demand, this was almost certainly it.
AutoCAD 2027: Older Drawings Read Correctly Again
On AutoCAD 2027 only, drawings saved by earlier FireCAD versions stored their embedded settings in a format the newer .NET runtime no longer reads. Every read failed silently, so FireCAD behaved as though the settings were absent - coverage display, device-type associations and wirepath segment links all missing. AutoCAD 2025 and 2026 were never affected, which is why opening the same drawing in 2026 appeared to fix it.
FireCAD reads that older format directly now. Expect coverage areas and device links to reappear on affected drawings - that is data that was always stored there.
The Palette
- New installs get a sensibly placed palette. On first run it docks itself at a usable width instead of wherever AutoCAD last left it. Once per Windows user per product, and it never fights you afterward. Upgrading from a much older build may cost you one re-dock.
- FireCAD Standalone keeps the palette where you put it. The standalone products run on a fixed AutoCAD profile that discarded palette geometry at exit, so the palette reset every launch. FireCAD stores the position itself now. It saves on a normal exit, so a crash still loses that session's move.
FireCAD 2027 Standalone: the Menu Loads
The 2027 installer wrote its menu file to a folder the product never reads, so no FireCAD menu or ribbon appeared. FireCAD 2026 was never affected. Fixed, and verified on clean installs of both years.
Reporting Beta Issues
Include your FireCAD version (About on the FireCAD Tools ribbon), what you were doing, and the project if you can share it. Email support or open a ticket through the Help Center.
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