Conrad Preen

@avdoxa123 You can change this in the preferences. Losing my way in my own software - what next? !!!

@avdoxa123 Thanks for raising the issue! You ought to be able to edit the OptJack symbol that gets imported to your document on first use of the tool. However I'm seeing that editing the connector type does not work. Looks like it's being cached somewhere. I am investigating. Conrad

@Jess A How about turning it off when you select another tool? I want this mode to be "spring-loaded" so you don't end up wondering what's going on. But I can see that it would be frustrating if you want to redraw successive circuits. Trying to find the middle way here. It's not a big thing to change but let's get it right. Conrad

Sorry my mistake - I misread your post. We're talking about the Connect tool Redraw mode. Well there you go... we thought that leaving this mode on was a bug because it could easily result in unexpected behavior of the Connect tool. Seems like we disabled a feature in your view. Leave this with me. I'll see if I can find a way to make everyone happy in a service pack. Sorry we inconvenienced you. Conrad

@Jeff G just trying that here and I'm not seeing this at all. Can you give some details? Mac / Win, version & build number? Maybe PM me a document that does the problem? As soon as we can reproduce it we will get it sorted out. Conrad

@Daniel Dickman Thank you very much for reporting these problems. I will file the necessary bugs / enhancement requests. If possible please PM sample files that show these problems. It really helps testing our solutions against real-world examples. Best regards Conrad

@tom-SPL Yes I can see that might be inconvenient. We have to adjust the parameters so that overall height = bottom thickness + 44.445mm * RU + top thickness. Preserving the RU value as you ask begs the question of whether to adjust top or bottom or both? But I do see your point. We will look into this and see if there's a better way to link these parameter values. Conrad

Hi @Daniel Dickman In this case is the rack frame object configured as a tray? What I'm thinking is that we could have equipment mounted in trays aligned to the bottom center of the slot as though the force of gravity was at work. But for normal (non-tray) rack frames maybe the best would be to center the equipment in the slot? What do you think? Conrad

Hi Daniel, Thanks for the picture - it makes the issue very clear. You are using equipment with images in ways that we didn't anticipate... I haven't got an immediate solution to suggest but I will think about this and see what we can do. Conrad

Move your circuit numbers away fro the labels using the settings. Let me know if that does the trick. Conrad

Hi @Callum Walker In order to make a single socket object function as a feed-thru i.e. be both a source for one circuit and a destination for another we have to make some assumptions about the general direction of signal flow. And we settled on left-to-right as being the most usual. The blue line in your drawing shows a flow going right-to-left. I can't think of a way to detect that intention. If you are bent on doing it this way I think you will probably have to 'cheat' in the way you said. That's how we used to do connector panels in the old days and it was OK. Conrad

Hi @Brian Nitz Testing for an empty string is a bit tricky. Src_Slot^ will match anything. The way you could do this is to create a rule for each possible value of Src_Slot and then have Src_Slot^ as the last one to catch the empties. So something like Src_Slot^03=%s%1%2%303%5 Src_Slot^02=%s%1%2%302%5 Src_Slot^01=%s%1%2%301%5 Src_Slot^=%s%1%2%300%5 Not the most elegant but I think it would work. is that making sense? Conrad

Hi Brian, You almost got it but not quite. There are two parts to a rule: A condition that needs to be true for the rule to apply. A cable number format to be applied if the conditions are met. So the a rule takes the form <condition1>&<condition2>&...<condition_n>=<format>. Each condition looks for a Circuit parameter value beginning with a string. So for say the first condition is Src_Dev_Name^MTX that means true if the source device name starts with MTX. And as the rule is tried on each circuit, if it succeeds all the characters after MTX are stored in a variable named %1 that you can use in your format. So if you have a circuit originating from device MTX02 with the tag %1 in your format you insert 02 in the circuit number. You can have several conditions and each one collects its suffix in a tag %1, %2 %3 etc. Enough theory - back to what you want to do. You're looking to number your cable according to their source device location. So first you need conditions. Since these are catch-all they will be like Src_Room^&Src_Rack^&Src_RackU^&Src_Slot^&Src_Skt_Name^. This way the conditions are looking for nothing special and the rule will always apply. Then your number format will be %1%2%3%4%5 and it should produce a nice long string concatenation of v=whatever those values are. My guess for your rule would be Signal^&Src_Room^&Src_Rack^&Src_RackU^&Src_Slot^&Src_Skt_Name^=%s%1%2%3%4%5 Hope this helps and gives you the power to implement what you want. Also check out the online help for this. It's surprisingly good given the complexity. Conrad

@Callum Walker Hi Callum, from what I see you want to create 3D racks - right? To do this you use the Equipment Rack 3D tool which places the corresponding object on your drawing. The rack object draws itself according to its parameters and doesn't use symbols as part of its graphics. Its job is to provide a container for equipment items. The best way to find out its capabilities is to put a rack on your drawing and then try the various options in the Object Info Palette. These are all explained in the online help. You can have various styles of rack: 4-post, 2-post, console, enclosure to model various situations. If you want to use a 3D symbol that looks like your favourite rack, a good way to do that is to create an ordinary 3D symbol of the rack and then place a console-style Equipment Rack 3D object into it to give it rack-mounting rails. Then when you drag a rack-mount equipment item over it the equipment snaps into place and detects the rack and rack U position. Perhaps that's what you're looking for. Reach out to me if anything didn't make sense. Conrad

@basicmonkey Hello! This is exactly the situation that the Adapter object is designed to handle! The Adapter connects directly to a device socket without a circuit, converting it into one or more different sockets. The main body of the Barco E2 is a device, and the i/o cards are adapters. You create sockets on the E2 for the card slots and create adapters for the various option cards. Place the adapters on the slot sockets to configure the Barco. Connect up to the rest of the system with circuits (Connect tool). Here's your file reworked to show how to use adapters and adapter slots in physical equipment. Should give you a starting point. Conrad GL West End Schematics - adapter.vwx