Conrad Preen

2025-03-26T07:36:17Z

@R_Teunissen a Rack Frame object does not have to be in a rack! It can be, but it can also sit wherever you put it. So I think it is a close enough fit to what we need and it's better not to re-invent the wheel. The main issue is the variable size of modules. But if we put a little water in our wine and work with fixed size slots I think we can achieve some useful results at very low cost. Certainly better than what we have now.

I will plan a change on these lines and see where it takes us.

March 19

@Rabbit Abbott If you like please PM me the file, Seth never replied AFAIK.

Conrad

March 19

If you're making new panel connectors, have a look in here and follow the same naming conventions with your connectors.

March 19

Sounds like there might be a case for a DIN rail style for rack frames. The user can then set the slot width the way they want maybe with 18mm as a default. The only question in my mind is will this satisfy enough of the people enough of the time? It's a curious thing but if we bring out a feature that provides some useful automation that covers say 80% of cases, the people in the 20% will hate us even though this wasn't a feature they had before anyway. Human nature I guess.

Let's keep the conversation going Remco - I think there's something here and I do agree that DIN rail is a popular mounting technique.

Conrad

March 11

Hi @R_Teunissen Remco!

That's interesting. My own research and the discussion above showed that although 1M = 18mm is common there were a lot of deviations. In order to automate any process we have to standardise. If industry users will accept 18mm as a standard for DIN rail slots and that deviations become their responsibility then we have a basis to move forward.

Regarding solutions, we already have one - the Rack Frame. Essentially the DIN rail is a variant of the rack frame. So we don't really need any special new tools or behaviors to support this, just different graphics. This would be an easy win - IF we can settle on an 18mm slot width. If we can't do that then we will have to number modules ordinally left-to-right and accept the inefficiencies that will result from inserting /deleting a module in the middle (renumbering everything else to the right throughout the drawing).

As engineers we all think in terms of how we would solve the problem. But that's jumping the gun! The first step in any project is to define the requirements. Establish the goals. Then work out a solution that meets those requirements. The forum is always fun because I have to work backwards from the suggestions to figure out what the goals were.

I'm happy to put this one on the road map if I can get some clarity about the requirements. In my view the simpler the better.

Conrad

March 10

Hi everyone!

You might be wondering why we even have this Schematic Objects Grid setting, 'cos yes it can cause some headaches. But, it also has a benefit. And that is it allows you to draw schematics at scales other than 1:1. This can be incredibly useful when you have brought in architectural floor plans and you want to draw the schematic on them to scale. Take the case of a very simple event setup with some speakers and mics on stage and a mixing desk out in the seating area. By drawing the schematic to scale you can read off the rough cable lengths directly from circuit perimeters.

Obviously this is just a quick and dirty method but for those really simple shows it gets you there very quickly. And without having to do a full-on physical layout with cable paths etc. which would be the way to go for more complex installations.

Just thought I'd take this opportunity to fill in the "why?" of this feature.

Conrad

February 24

@Phil B Hmmm just to make the software happy eh... lets have look at a few of the myriad special cases invented by audio manufacturers that complicate design software.

To begin with, isn't it amazing how many different connectors the audio world has invented to pass analog audio XLR, RCA, RJ12, RJ45, 1/4-inch jack, 3.5mm jack, 2.5mm jack. etc. etc. all that to connect 2 wires and maybe a shield. And to make matters even more interesting we now have chassis connectors that can accept an XLR or a 1/4-inch jack so now we have 2 connector types possible for a given cable end - to automate that we have to read the users mind! Another goodie, hybrid analog/digital inputs that can accept AES or line level, so now some inputs (but not others) can accept 2 different signals. But we expect the software just to "know" what is correct. If audio guys had to write software I suspect they would become a lot more consistent about how they handle signals.

Sorry Phil, sometimes I have to push back a bit. Software and audio are going have to meet in the middle I think.

February 19

@Phil B ConnectCAD is blissfully ignorant about what signal types are compatible in the real world. Hoping to change that but without complicating the product too much.

Conrad

January 30

@R_Teunissen

Hi Remco,

I'm aware of the demand for this workflow. Implementing it involves some steps, which we are currently taking. In the current version the Equipment Item knows nothing about connectivity i.e. the sockets present on a device. So it isn't possible to automatically create a device from its physical equipment counterpart.

However you can create devices from a worksheet. So here are the steps:

Create a report of equipment items listing Make an Model
Convert to a non-report worksheet using ConnectCAD > Documentation > Convert Report to List...
Then create devices from the list using ConnectCAD > Update > Create Devices from Worksheet ...

That will get them there today. Moving forward we will create a more streamlined approach.

Conrad

January 30

Hi @Andrew.Stansfield

Assuming we are talking about scripting here, I don't think you will get an event when a record is updated. Probably the simplest is to create a command that copies the changes to all the other instances by traversing the drawing list with a FOREACH.

Conrad

January 30

Hi @Seth Moak

Would it be possible for you to PM me the file? I was trying to reproduce the problem and I didn't see it.

Best regards

Conrad

January 28

@btgroves If you have a reproducible case and you can share the file, please PM it to me with the "how to make it happen" and we'll look into it.

Conrad

January 26

@Thomas_ thanks again for sharing this.

Basically we run into the limitation that software doesn't know what you're thinking... yet... so when you have several paths to the same place plus shared intermediate points it will go ahead like a good little computer and find all the permutations regardless of whether that is a sensible thing to do. Because it doesn't have any idea what sensible is. And I'm afraid the outlook for automating "sensible" isn't very rosy. ChatGPT has read the internet and still manages to spout dangerously plausible nonsense.

Separating cable path use by signal type sounds like it might be a reasonably easy thing to add. And it aligns well with good installation practice. So I will add this to the pile of things to think about 🙂 .

At the moment your best bet might be to draw Spotlight cable objects that follow your preferred routes through the path network and assign circuits to the cables using the circuit Object Info Palette.

January 24

Thanks @Thomas_

I really appreciate your sharing the difficulties you've encountered with me. It helps me to see what adjustments could be made to smooth the way.

9 hours ago, Thomas_ said:

I kind of wish I could easily modify the arcs, or swap something from straight line label to arc label after the fact.

Yes I think that would be very nice. I'll think about how we could do that.

9 hours ago, Thomas_ said:

What I was trying to describe is:

1. A to B, all is correct, and label is attached to B

2. A to C, label is located at A

This is a good point too. I'm not sure if it's possible to programmatically determine the "correct" way because that is mostly in the head of the designer. But being able to reverse the sense of a home run after the fact would be neat.

Thank you again for your input and the time you have given to explaining the issues.

Best regards

Conrad

January 23

@Sam Williams a picture would help if you have the time.

January 23

@Sam Williams Best suggestion I can offer is to read up the online help about the ConnectCAD cable numbering system. You can define your own rules for cable numbering specifically for your application. The help explains this pretty well.

If you can find a common characteristic of your switches then you can set up rules that give them no cable number.

Conrad

January 23

22 hours ago, Thomas_ said:

1. Not sure why the annotations to show the cables going between the AV-R1 at the top of the page and CTP_AVL and CTP_AVR do not include the arcs there, for instance?

Hi @Thomas_ those look like "home-run" style designations. The command puts home-runs in for longer runs to avoid crossing arcs that are visually confusing. In the dialog there's a slider that you can move between all arcs and all home-runs, and any mix in between.

22 hours ago, Thomas_ said:

2. There seems to be drawn here 4 Cat6a cables between CTP_DSL and CTP_DSR, which doesn't make sense to me. Below is a screenshot of the schematic of those two plates, nothing should be going directly between them, almost all cable goes back to AV-R1 only.

There'll be a reason for this. Just tracing circuit X9022 it goes from CTP-DSL to MONITOR4 which is located at the Drop Point CTP-DSR so that implies a cable between the two.

22 hours ago, Thomas_ said:

3. For some reason the annotation on CTP_AVR is how I would expect it, showing the cables pulled to it. But CTP_AVL the annotation ends up reversed, as if pulling from CTP_AVL to AV-R1. While this is almost a semantic thing, it is a thing I can expect to be easily missed by AV installers so consistency becomes important for me on this, is there something i can do to get this shown the other way around?

Pulling a bunch of cables from A to B is the same as going from B to A. So we merge the B to A cables with the A to B 'cos it would make no sense to have 2 separate pulls along the same path. The software can't distinguish which way around works best in your head so we have to make an arbitrary choice.

22 hours ago, Thomas_ said:

4. Very tough to read but there are two mystery cables shown between CTP_TV1 and CTP_TV2, similar to issue #2 above, not sure where they are coming from.

I suspect it's the same problem - TV1 and TV 2 are mixed up.

Hope this helps a bit

Connectcad User Params · January 15

@Justin Freeman This ask to have user-defined data synced between devices and equipment items has come up before. So I will look into how we could provide this. Making no promises because it won't necessarily be easy or even possible for any arbitrary data.

Conrad

January 15

@AaronWillis-SWI We scale ConnectCAD schematic objects ( which in essence are Not To Scale ) to the snap grid so that you can use ConnectCAD at other scales than 1:1. This lets event designers draw there schematics directly on floor plans at scale and get a quick and dirty cable length estimate.

Best practice is not to change the snap grid once you have begun. For beginners we recommend you start from the template.

Conrad

January 15

@EricSeipel The great thing about Vectorworks and ConnectCAD is that you are not forced into a complicated workflow to solve simple problems. If the tape measure works for you that's great - whatever floats your boat !!!

January 15

@gkwilson What you have there is a report on the Circuit objects in the drawing. i.e. it shows you what the parameters of these objects are. You can type numbers in to the cells in that column and these will update the corresponding Circuits. If you want to automatically number circuits you can either use the ConnectCAD Number Cables command or the Spotlight Numbering command. Both give you considerable flexibility to define the way you number circuits but with somewhat different approaches. In the online help you will find quite detailed explanations about how these commands work.

I hope this helps you.

Conrad

January 10

@Thomas_ OK the thing with the spare cabling looks like a bug. I can reproduce it here. So I will file that for immediate attention. There is a semi-workaround, when you are using the Edit Cabling tool to add extra circuits do this in Top/Plan view. Apologies for any inconvenience. I'm pretty sure that was working in any view but sometimes there are complex interactions between different parts of Vectorworks.

About analysing the network. You will need to re-analyse whenever you have made changes to cable paths, drop points etc. At the moment we have this as a manual command so you can choose when to run a possibly time-consuming routine. This process determines the routes between all the drop points / racks / equipment. One day I hope we will have this working automatically in the background but we have to be careful that it doesn't get under your feet! So for now you decide when.

I noticed with your file that Analyse fails because of some devices that (quite reasonably) aren't on the layout. I've made a note to look at the way we handle this because I suspect the drawing remains marked as not-analysed when in fact you know that it's OK. We're not letting the software know this so I reckon we're "over-analysing" a bit.

Thanks for raising the issue.

Conrad

January 10

@gkwilson Sorry I don't quite follow you. What's the distinction in your mind between Hardware and Equipment?

You don't need to create schematic devices in order to insert blank panels! Just use the Equipment Item tool to add them to your layout.

You can have Equipment that has no corresponding schematic Device and Devices that have no corresponding Equipment. This is the freedom you get with ConnectCAD!

C

January 10

Hi @gkwilson

The Device and Equipment Item are separate Vectorworks objects although they represent the same real-world thing. When you create equipment the device still exists. It is not transformed into an Equipment Item. The command Create Equipment does not automatically add a copy of whatever records you've attached to a device to the equipment items it creates. Is that what you are asking for? Probably not... Storing the same information is 2 places is a recipe for synchronisation issues and you are clearly aware of that trap.

I hear what you're saying but I'm not sure what we could be doing to help. These kind of workflows involving custom records differ a lot between customers. So you really need to look into scripting and take control of your situation. You can find a lot of information on developer.vectorworks.net. Do reach out to me if you need any help getting started.

Best regards

Conrad

January 10

@Thomas_ Is it possible for you to PM me the file you are working on? Some of that seems anomalous so I'd like to check what's going on.

Conrad

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