Conrad Preen

@Callum Walker Sounds like you changed grid spacing in mid drawing. What version are you using? Conrad

@Remco Teunissen Hey Remco, we think there maybe a way around this - I filed a bug 🙂 Thanks as ever! Conrad

@TwoBeAss Great to see a script posted here !!!

@TwoBeAss Did Analyze Cable Routes terminate normally or did it say that some circuits can't be routed. If the latter, on the schematic you'll find that the offending circuits can't be marked up. Did you run Check Drawing or ConnectCAD Status? Both of these will give you more information on what's going on. Once you've checked these, if you still have problems post the drawing here so we can see what you are doing and advise. Conrad

Hi Remco, I agree with your use case. Unfortunately we have conflicting requirements. People also want to freely rotate their equipment items in 3D space and hybrid objects only rotate about the Z axis. This means we have to explode the symbol before drawing it. Conrad

Love the GVG switcher - very cool complete with adapter slots for the option cards. Great!

@TwoBeAss It's being worked on 🙂

@TwoBeAss Yes, we need to allow a certain length in the first and last segments of a circuit to make room for connector types and circuit numbers. However, when all the vertices are collinear then the path should simplify to a line. If you draw a fresh circuit between your 2 devices that's what you get. So thanks for reporting this. Here's a quick demo of Connect Next functionality. Draw the first circuit. Double-click subsequent sockets below with the Connect tool. ConnectNext.mp4

@TwoBeAss Thanks for the file! I will submit a bug for this because I think something may have changed in the rules we use to reshape circuits when devices are moved. Doesn't look like a complete show-stopper. Visually it's not offensive. Here's a few more tricks that might help: - draw one new circuit and use the ReRoute tool to apply its path to a bunch of selected circuits - use Connect Selected command to connect sockets facing each other - use the double-click (Connect Next) function of the Connect tool connect the "next socket" between 2 devices. You first create a circuit using the Connect tool, leave it selected and double-click the next source socket with the Connect tool under the one you just connected. This will automatically connect the next pair of sockets. - Connect tool multi-mode can create multiple circuits between devices. Lot's of ways to connect up quicker. Hope I've helped a bit. Conrad

@fips thanks for posting this. Allow me one observation though... I'm not a fan of forums because although they contain a mass of useful information it is so badly organised that no-one can find the answers they need. Having a thread titled "ConnectCAD Issue Tracker" doesn't tell you what its about. All it says is "someone has a problem" and human nature being what it is, that is true of pretty much every post on the forum. So I would encourage everyone to create a new topic with a descriptive title for each new issue. It makes it a lot easier to find. Thanks again for your valuable feedback. Conrad

@TwoBeAss Hello! The Circuit object is supposed to detect the case where vertices are collinear and remove redundant corners. So I am curious as to how your file got this way. I suspect that there is a very slight vertical misalignment which is causing the Circuit to think that these points are not collinear. If you select the source and destination devices and execute Align to Grid, and then select the circuit and nudge it up and down (using Shift-arrow keys) to force it to reset does that remove the extra vertices? If not, please PM me the file and we'll take a closer look. Conrad

@Greg Abel I would agree that it would be cool to be able to just drag an equipment item out of a rack and drop it into a slot inside another equipment item. But I can't think of a real-world case where an adapter card could be both stand-alone inside a rack frame or plugged into a device. Very cool. but definitely not worth the coding effort. Adapters are not devices. They basically transform one type of socket into another. We leverage them to provide a way to model complex devices that can have multiple option cards. And adapter slots are just a way of visualising the physical cards on layouts. Rack frames on the other hand are containers for stand-alone devices which on the schematic could be all over the place. So they really are different things. Conrad

Just want to thank everyone for raising this issue. I have an idea how to make life easier here and I will push for this. Conrad

@scobb Hello! There's nothing stopping you creating schematics on sheet layers if you want to. Some people do that. The downside is that you can't squidge up a big drawing a bit when it just exceeds a standard paper size. But maybe that doesn't matter any more. If you create schematics on design layers there is no way the flag can show the sheet layer because a design layer can appear in multiple viewports on different sheets. Vectorworks doesn't like things having the same name but you could do something creative with underscores or hyphens - just a thought.. Conrad

@ErikvanderKuijl It's already on our list! Coming soon!

@FKA More than one way to do this: - Use a script to get the "CableCalculatedLength" parameter and set the "CableLength" parameter to the next longest preset length. Needs some extra skills but worth learning. - Use the Circuit report - add extra columns for your preset cable types and use a formula to check the calculated length and put a 1 in the correct column. Then the worksheet does your totals for you. Here's a couple of pics. Might get the job done? Conrad

@fips In the operation you are showing here all ConnectCAD does is tell Vectorworks to switch layer and pan / zoom to center the equipment item corresponding to your device. So your point really concerns Vectorworks generally. If you would like me to take a look please PM me the file and if I see unusual behavior/slow down I can create a bug for the appropriate team to look at. Thanks also for sharing with us your experiences as a new ConnectCAD user coming from other software. I'm really interested to hear this because I want to make that transition as smooth as possible !!! I wrote the first cut of ConnectCAD some 25 years ago because I tried Vidcad and didn't like what I saw. Having my own CAD system gave me a way to catch whatever curve balls my boss threw at me. And now as part of Vectorworks I try to keep that spirit going. There is a whole lot of thinking behind every design choice that has guided the product over the years. You mentioned design layers vs. sheet layers - as Niko says there's nothing to stop you drawing schematics on sheet layers if you want to. Being able to shrink a large schematic that is just too big for one sheet has saved me on some occasions. Or the symbols vs groups debate. The reason for this is flexibility. Half the device maybe be on a different schematic - take the case of audio/video mixers. And you hardly ever use all the ports on a device - do you want those cluttering up your drawing? Perhaps not. Adapters on the other hand are much more standard items that can't really appear on more than one schematic so we use symbols in an object wrapper to represent them. Generally we don't prevent you from doing things that might cause problems. We know that sometimes the shortest workflow from A to B is by going through an illegal state and we let you do that. So instead we warn of any potential issues via the ConnectCAD Status palette and the Check Drawing command. Thanks again. And do reach out if you need help. Conrad

Just to add to Niko's reply, that's the way to do it for a specific Circuits. If you want to customise the text at a global level then go to the General section of the ConnectCAD Settings dialog and use the Edit Circuit Graphics button in there. Conrad

The template and the blank document have different layer scales. And ConnectCAD uses its own grid (see ConnectCAD Settings menu ) to lay out objects on schematics. This is so that you can draw sensible-looking schematics at any layer scale. If in doubt use the templates and life will be easy. If you still have problems do PM the files and I'll take a closer look. Conrad

Yes. Drop points are for those cases where we need to specify our cabling before equipment is finalised. In the case of facilities boxes, since you basically design these and their technology doesn't go out of date that fast, I would create them as equipment and use them directly. My 2c worth. Conrad

@Daniel Dickman @Pat Stanford being able to have multiple schematic instances is a valuable feature and I don't think anyone would want us to get rid of it. The best object to count for reporting is probably the physical Equipment Item because each device name points to only one Equipment Item. We don't enforce unique Equipment names because that would make it hard to copy/paste/rename bunches of equipment. But error checking detects duplicates. But I get it. Not every project needs you to do physical layouts. ConnectCAD is truly drawing-based instead of having a database lurking underneath. Not having the stringencies of a relational database to deal with allows for more flexible workflows. But like everything in life there is a price to pay. C

@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.

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

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

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