Plan KNX in PlanElec and document it for the electrical inspection

PlanElec documents the electrical side of a KNX installation: the bus power supply and the actuator as distribution-board modules, every occupied actuator channel with its load, and every control point on the situation plan. You need a project with a drawn floor plan, a distribution board and circuits; the result is a single-line diagram, a situation plan and a PDF export in which the supply, the actuator and the OUT and KNX IN channels are visible. What PlanElec does not do: physical addresses, group addresses, parameterisation, programming or a .knxproj import. That remains the job of ETS; this guide covers that technical boundary directly. It describes Belgian residential documentation under the AREI/RGIE.

Enable KNX as the project's automation system

Open the Project area and choose Edit project metadata. In the Customer block you will find the field Building automation, offering None / conventional and KNX. Select KNX.

This is a project property, not a global preference: it applies to this one project and can be reverted at any time. You can tell it worked because the row KNX automation appears in the distribution board's module palette. While None / conventional is selected, the two KNX modules are reachable neither through the palette nor through search.

Place push buttons on the situation plan

Switch to the Situation Plan. In the device palette, the Push button tool sits under Switching & controls. Use it to place every control point at its real location — including several push buttons for the same light.

Two points matter here:

• The Push button tool is available regardless of the KNX setting. In PlanElec a push button is first of all an ordinary control device; only the assignment to an actuator channel turns it into a KNX control point.
• A push button counts as 0 W in the load balance. It sits on the bus and carries no load current, so it does not enter phase balancing or the voltage-drop calculation.

Then link the push buttons and the lights they are meant to switch to a circuit, exactly like any other device — see Edit switch chains, circuits and cable routes. This is not a formality: the channel assignment in the next step requires the load and the push button to already sit under an overcurrent protective device.

Add the bus power supply and the actuator in the distribution board

Switch to the Distribution Board. In the module palette, the row KNX automation holds two manufacturer-neutral modules:

Drag the variant into a free slot — or select it and then place it. The KNX row stays visible even when Show all modules (control, KNX, Shelly, accessories) is not ticked.

Both modules need an MCB or an RCBO upstream. That is the condition under which PlanElec renders them on the single-line diagram at all. If either one hangs directly off the main switch or off a plain RCD, it counts as a module that cannot be shown and blocks the final submission with the finding Review or remove distribution-board modules that cannot be shown.

Name the actuator channels and assign loads

Select the placed KNX actuator. The right-hand panel shows the KNX channels block: four settings, then one block per channel.

1. Function — Switching or Shutter. The function decides which consumers can be assigned at all: Switching accepts lighting consumers, Shutter accepts shutter motors. Changing the function releases every existing load assignment on this actuator. So fix the function first.
2. Channel prefix — the part of the name before the running number, CH by default. Up to eight characters from A–Z, 0–9, _ and -; lowercase is converted to uppercase. Prefix LI produces channels LI1, LI2 and so on. This is the identifier that later appears on the single-line diagram — pick one that is still readable in five years.
3. Channels — 4, 8, 12 or 16. When you reduce the count, the assignments of the dropped channels are released; the remaining channels keep theirs.
4. Current/channel — 6, 10 or 16 A. This value is the ceiling against which PlanElec checks the assigned load.

Then assign a consumer under Load for each channel. The list contains every compatible consumer in the project, not only those of this board. Unassigned reverts the assignment.

What PlanElec does behind the scenes on assignment: the consumer is re-parented under the actuator, the actuator itself is moved under that consumer's protective device, and the required cable is created. The channel thereby becomes the visible link between protection and load.

If an assignment fails, the message This assignment is not possible. Check the protection path, device type and existing channel assignment. appears. The three usual causes are exactly those: the consumer sits under no overcurrent protection, its type does not match the selected actuator function, or it is already assigned to another channel — including a channel on a different actuator.

Assign control points to the KNX IN channels

In the same channel block, next to Load, sits the field Push button. It lists every push button placed in the project. Assign each occupied channel the control point that is meant to trigger it.

Here too, a push button can only sit on one channel. If two control points are meant to switch the same light — two-way switching in a conventional installation — PlanElec today represents only one of them as a channel assignment. The second one stays a placed control device linked to a circuit but without a channel reference, and produces a warning, not an error.

An open push-button assignment does not block the export. An open load assignment does — see below.

Check the representation on the single-line diagram

Switch to the Single-Line Diagram. You will see:

Only occupied channels are drawn. An actuator with sixteen channels and three assignments produces three channel groups, not sixteen. The legend lists KNX power supply, KNX actuator and Push button / KNX control point accordingly.

One thing regularly shows up here: consumers created from the floor plan carry their rated power in Auto mode and hold no fixed value in the data model yet. That is not enough for KNX loads. Select the consumer on the single-line diagram and set Rated power (W) in the properties panel — simply toggling between Auto and Custom input already writes the value.

Clear the findings before the final submission

PlanElec checks the KNX configuration separately, alongside the AREI self-check. The findings appear in the Export area, grouped under Complete the KNX supply, protection and channel assignments.

On channel overload: PlanElec converts the assigned rated power into a current at 230 V and compares it with Current/channel. A 2,000 W load on a 6 A channel gives roughly 8.7 A and is therefore an error.

On open load assignment: a consumer that was assigned once stays internally flagged as KNX-controlled. Set its assignment back to Unassigned and leave it there, and PlanElec reports it as an open load assignment. That is intended: a load planned as KNX-controlled that no longer sits on any channel is no longer traceable on the diagram.

Tell draft documents and final submission apart

The Export area has two levels:

• Draft documents stay available even with incomplete KNX data. They carry the draft notice and are meant for coordination, not for submission.
• Final submission additionally requires validation to have run without errors, no distribution-board modules that cannot be shown, no blocking KNX finding, and a confirmed Single-line diagram reviewed.

Open warnings — including the open control assignment — do not block the final submission. They are counted and remain your decision. Details on document types, pagination and the dossier are in Export documents.

What PlanElec does not do for KNX today

These limits are deliberate and will only be narrowed together with functionality that has actually shipped:

• no physical KNX addresses and no device identifiers
• no group addresses and no communication-object matrix
• no line or area topology of the bus
• no device parameterisation, programming or bus diagnostics
• no ETS replacement, no .knxproj import and no export
• no assessment of the bus cable: segment length, number of devices and the sizing of the supply against the actual bus load are not checked
• no check of the control logic: a push button on the wrong channel is formally correct
• supported loads are lighting consumers and shutter motors; other consumer types cannot be assigned to a channel
• no guarantee of AREI/RGIE conformity — the self-check is indicative, the official assessment rests with an approved inspection body

For the inspection, what the AREI requires remains decisive: on the single-line diagram, light points, socket outlets and control units are identified by a number giving the order in which they occur in the elementary circuit; on the position plan, switches and control units are identified by the letter of the circuit they belong to and the sequential number of the light point or appliance they control (sub-section 3.1.2.1, point a). A KNX push button is such a control unit — the relation "this push button operates that light point" therefore belongs in the inspection documents, not only in ETS.

Related guides

• Edit switch chains, circuits and cable routes
• Place and connect electrical symbols
• Export documents
• What the AREI self-check verifies