CharlesD

@Conrad Preen I agree with your take on this for mounting kits. After you explained it to me last fall, I've been doing just that-- and modeling my mounting kits as rack frames. I agree, the lugs break the model-- and as it stands I think there's less friction to get rid of them for half rack width items (but keep them for full rack width items)

Thanks Conrad, this is detailed and informative as always! The tradeoffs and design decisions make sense. I will have to continue to get my head and workflow around where/how circuits and cables are similar-- but it does seem like the tool as the flexibility to accomodate all use cases.

Hello All- As I dive into cable routing, I feel like I've lost the plot on the difference between a cable and a circuit. When you connect two schematic devices together you create a "Circuit" object. It looks like this object defaults to a "Cable" of "null". It has fields for "Cable Length", "Calculated Cable Length", "Cable Type", "Cable Outside Diameter". So there's a lot of references to "cable". A single circuit object can contain any number of "Circuits"-- (i.e. you connect from a socket with 10x circuits to a socket with 10x circuits-- your circuit object has 10x circuits) It looks like I can assign any circuit on the drawing to a user defined "Cable". The "Edit Cabling Tool" edits cabling in a drawing. For a connection between two equipment racks with 20 circuits, the dialog will show me a "Cable Count" of 20. The dialog also has a "Cable" field, but when I assign "Cable" to the circuits in that route, the "Cable" field is not populated with that information. Is anyone able to point me towards any documentation on Cable vs Circuit? When and why would I want to use a "Cable"?

Hello- What is everyone's preferred way of handling a transition from duplex LC sockets to simplex LC sockets? In this case, I have an LC Duplex optical terminal panel, and I wanted to model both A and B strands. I'm thinking I may have to just stick to combining the two LC inputs as a single duplex input, but I'd prefer to keep them separate if anyone has an elegant approach to this.

Thanks @Pat Stanford. I have reviewed some of your previous posts and I was able to create a worksheet with DatabaseByScript. Two things I wanted to make sure I understood: 1) This is not bi-directional, right? It doesn't seem like I can edit the data of the rows of the database. 2) I am struggling to understand how to work with the "ConnectCAD Device Definition". 2.1) Where is this record stored? It doesn't appear in my Records folder 2.2) Is this record specal or diferent than any other regular record? 2.3) When I inspect the record in the Record Format Connection I see twelve fields, including "Socket groups". But when I look at adding fields from this record format to a worksheet, I only see eleveen fields, no "Socket groups". Is hints on why it's different? As a note, it looks like if I create a data sheet of a symbol object it looks like I can get those fields into a worksheet-- but I'm currently not sure what a Data Sheet is, or a way to do that programatically, I'll try to RTFM.

Adding my (only slightly) related thoughts on this. I am currently looking to enhance the following three items in my workflow. I believe these are common enough that it might be nice to have some default workflows setup in CC: Make it easier to export my device definitions. Our company has external tooling/DB to manage device info. If I create a device in CC I have to manually re-create it in another piece of software. I'd love to be able to get a YAML/JSON/CSV out. Make it easier to import my device defintions. This sounds like polishing up your internal tooling. But, it's the reverse of above. When I have external device definitions in a 3rd party DB, I want to bring them into CC. Ideally this is an option through a YAML/JSON/CSV. It probably wants a dialog to handle merge conflicts? Make it easier to bulk modify my CC device definitions. Standards change, people disagree. What happens when a user wants to update a 1,000 device library and change every instance of 12GV to 12G-SDI? A type of interactive worksheet or script would be helpful, or it could lean on the import/export as discussed above. (I've started my own script for this, but we'll see if I get around to finishing it.)

Hi All- In the video / AV market there has been a big push towards IP based video (such as SMPTE 2110). I am very curious to hear how others are approaching your schematic drawings in a world where everything is IP based. Has this changed the way you approach schematic drawings? Are there challenges you have when drawing or designing IP based systems in ConnectCAD?

This seems like a fair compromise. I could see a world with a more elegant solution... but it's probaby not worth the development cycles if no one else is itching for a solution.This seems like a fair compromise. I could see a world with a more elegant solution... but it's probaby not worth the development cycles if no one else is itching for a solution.

I am inclined to agree with you, but I wonder... would this be directional with sockets? For instance a 12GV input can probably accept a 3GV signal on a cable... But not the other way around... Would this definition be done at the signal level? Or at the device level?

I've been thinking about this... compatability is a bit of a can of worms! For a LAN port... you might set: -Physical: RJ45 / SFP / QSFP -Speed: 10mbps/100mbps/1gbps/2.5gps/5gbps/10gbps/25gbps/40gbps/100gbps -POE: POE, POE+, POE++ For HDMI you might want to track HDMI1.4 vs HDMI2.0 vs HDMI2.1 etc... What if you want to track another paremeter, such as HDCP? There's lot of factors to consider, I'd love to hear from others in the community what you might care about in regards to signal compatibility.

Hi All- I am really enjoying the new paradigm of storing device info in the attached record. One unintended consequence is it seems like it might be harder to change your mind about setting signal types. For instance, my library of devices has a signal "12G-SDI", but let's say I wanted to change it back to the pre-defined "12GV". Right now I think I need to manually open each record in VWX and make the change. Not a problem for a small library, but tedious for a larger library. Does anyone have a more elegant workflow for this? Worksheets cannot update record instances in symbol definitions, right?

The new system is a little difficult with half rack items. If I wanted to create a half rack width item it would make a 3d symbol for me with the half rack left justified. If I customized this symbol with graphics (like a picture for the face panel) then I would have to maintain two instances of this symbol in my library, one for left and one for right. Is there a cleaner way to do this than I'm thinking of?

Thanks @Nikolay Zhelyazkov! Is it possible to remove a symbol assigned to an Equipment? I don't think I've ever gone back to null.

Hello- I think I may be misunderstanding something basic about how Equipment items interact with their Symbol as I've run into a few sharp edges I wasn't expecting. In this case, I have an openGear module frame. I've created a Rack Frame in my Layout. I've created an OG card as a Device with physical dimensions, but set to Modular, 2-Slots. What I see is that when I insert this device into the rack frame it correctly shows update dimensions in the OIP from the rack frame... however I see that the 3d representation continues to use the 3d Symbol with random dimensions when I first created the device. Am I missing part of this workflow? How can I make sure that the 3d representation uses the OIP dims and not the symbol dims?

Thanks Conrad! I'll be excited to try out the signal compatability. Fair enough in regards to resources for content. For connector compatability, maybe it's something to revisit after signal compatability.