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Conrad Preen

Vectorworks, Inc Employee
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Posts posted by Conrad Preen

    Redraw Circuit Bug

    in ConnectCAD

    Posted

    @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

    Redraw Circuit Bug

    in ConnectCAD

    Posted

    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

    Redraw Circuit Bug

    in ConnectCAD

    Posted

    @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

    "Lock-In" Rack RU's?

    in Wishlist - Feature and Content Requests

    Posted

    @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

    Connector Panel Gender

    in ConnectCAD

    Posted

    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

    • Like 1

    Custom Cable Number Generation

    in ConnectCAD

    Posted

    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

     

     

    Custom Cable Number Generation

    in ConnectCAD

    Posted

    Hi Brian,

     

    You almost got it but not quite. There are two parts to a rule:

    1. A condition that needs to be true for the rule to apply.
    2. 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

    Adding an image to the front of an equipment item woes

    in ConnectCAD

    Posted

    @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

    Modular devices with card slots

    in ConnectCAD

    Posted

    @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

    • Like 3

    How I can start?

    in ConnectCAD

    Posted

    @Tom W. Jesse is right. Though whether or not it is "easy" is a matter of opinion. In domestic wiring you have few cables each generally going down their own path. In complex AV installations you have many cables that often share the same path, and these can carry multiple signals - a whole other level of complexity in other words. That's the world ConnectCAD caters to. You could use it but it's overkill.

     

    For domestic wiring you can use the simplifying assumption that circuit = cable = cable-path. You really just want to draw the wires and boxes on a floor plan and get some meaningful reports. How they are connected is pretty obvious. I'd agree that there is room for a basic electrical wiring tool.

     

    Conrad

    How I can start?

    in ConnectCAD

    Posted

    Hi @Tom W.

     

    Sorry Tom I mistook you for a colleague and then realised you were not. And let's face it the question is a little off-topic in this thread.

     

    Answer: yes you can but... using ConnectCAD for this purpose is a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. You need something simpler. The Design Express plug-in is probably what you want.

     

    Best

     

    Conrad

    Equipment Item Linked Symbols

    in ConnectCAD

    Posted

    Hi @Collin Klein,

     

    thanks for the detailed post explaining your workflow!

     

    11 hours ago, Collin Klein said:

    We are trying to adopt a workflow that allows us to import all of our equipment items from a CSV, enabling us to quickly use the “Create Equipment” function to generate our schematic devices

    This part has me a bit confused. Create Equipment creates an Equipment Item for each unique schematic device that it finds - so it can't create schematic devices from equipment. Perhaps it's the other way around? Are you creating schematic devices using Create Devices from Worksheet and then using Create Equipment to create their corresponding Equipment Items?

     

    11 hours ago, Collin Klein said:

    However, the record does not remain attached when using the “Create Equipment” function, requiring me to add it manually. Should this process happen automatically?

    No. Other users might not find that convenient. Bear in mind that you can have more than one schematic device referring to the same piece of physical equipment. If they all have the same name then they refer to the same real-world thing. For example, you might have the same network switch on a power schematic and on a network schematic on another layer. ConnectCAD is good with that provided the same socket doesn't appear twice inside the devices with the same name. Users may want to have records attached to device instances that would have no place attached to equipment.

     

    None of what you want is impossible. You can extend Vectorworks to accommodate your particular workflow using Vectorscript or Python. In fact that's that's how ConnectCAD was born more than 20 years ago. I don't like repetitive work so I started writing scripts to automate various tasks, then I joined them up. You can do the same. If you come up against any road-blocks reach out and we will help you.

     

    Best

     

    Conrad

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