Conrad Preen

Yes it has. Here's what it looks like in Vectorworks 2024 in our great new 3D rack workflow. Best Conrad

@wscooper Dear Will I have already tested this and made the video. It will be released very shortly. Conrad

Hi Simon @spettitt Adapters have always fallen into that grey area "is it a device? is it a cable? no, it's an adapter!". Circuits on schematics vs. the physical cables that implement them are another area that I have left a little murky - deliberately... For a lot of uses circuit = cable is a pretty reasonable assumption. But of course there are exceptions. These DO-SUB "adapter cables" are effectively 4 circuits packaged in the same wire. So, in a very simplistic way you could give each circuit the same Cable parameter and have them share a common path on the schematic up to the point where they break out to different devices. This will look fairly nice. But it doesn't help you count the number of DO-SUB's you need to order. So I think you do have to consider them as devices. After all you can connect a circuit to the multi-pin end and another circuit to extend the single end. So your "fake circuits" may not always be fake. And it needs to be on the bill of materials. Even though it looks like a cable, it walks like a device and quacks like device!!! The alternatives involve extreme complication of the Adapter object. Or a new Adapter Cable object... that could connect to device sockets or circuits at both its ends, and be re-shape-able. Guess that could be a project...? Conrad

@RMDiekmann And that is what ConnectCAD is all about !!!

Hi Simon @spettitt Thanks for the detailed use case. I shall think about that! Conrad

Maybe a Data Tag might sort it out for now?

'Connector itself' I guess would mean the chassis connector on the equipment. So, we'd be relying on common sense to make sure that cables aren't terminated with the wrong sex connectors? But we can't rely on common sense to know which side of a term is the soldering/crimping side... I will take care of term panels so that the correct connector type is displayed. But I don't think it's a good idea to change the connector-on-cable paradigm which has stood us in good stead for the past 20 years. With all respect and thanks for drawing our attention to the issue. Conrad

@Andy Bentley Thank you for bringing this up. It would rather nice to be able to do that. I'll add it to our list of things to look at. Conrad

@Jrw Right now you cannot. You can turn off all connector text by making the class CC-Circuit-Connector invisible. Thanks for the explanation about term panels 😉 . As I said, I knowingly took a short cut that has worked fairly well for 20 years + but it is on my list. C

Actually this is a case of term panels on schematics not "knowing" which side (left or right) is the inside of the panel. For many years we've just left this to common sense and that has worked surprisingly well. But you are right, and it's on my long list of things to make perfect 🙂 Conrad

The reason for that prefix is because Vectorworks need a unique name for the symbol definition. So we have to make sure it won't conflict. Conrad

Hi @Peter Z Externals are a special device that is the outside world. It's name is <EXT>. It's been like that for more than 20 years and people are fine with it. What Externals can also do now is to represent a Drop Point i.e. a physical place where cables emerge from containment. So if you really don't like <EXT> you could always define a drop point and give it whatever name you want. Best Conrad

@ryanww I'm generally not so crazy about the idea of equipment automatically resizing if the container (rack or frame) is changed. Equipment items model real-world stuff and our push is towards having these defined by the manufacturers. If a piece of equipment doesn't fit, then resizing it automatically in the CAD world might cover up a problem that will reveal itself in the real world. That my thinking behind this. Conrad

@bjoerka Thanks for drawing my attention to this! We will find a way to automate this. Conrad

@ryanww thank you for raising this. We will sort it out as soon as we are able to reproduce the problem. But I have to ask for your understanding here. We have to progress. And in some cases like this one, that involves rebuilding old workflows from the ground up. Inevitably there will be some problems that remain to be fixed. These teething troubles do not make the entire effort worthless. Let's work together to find out where the difficulties lie and resolve them. Conrad