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Conrad Preen

Vectorworks, Inc Employee
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Everything posted by Conrad Preen

  1. I have to chime in here. Whenever you customize ConnectCAD you have to test what you have done and make sure that it works. If you see a problem in your drawing, don't assume that it is a bug until you have tried the same operation using the standard template. And also @everyone if you have done some customization please say so when you report a problem here. Best Conrad
  2. Hi @Sullivan.NEP the connector spacing in ConnectCAD is determined by the snap grid setting. If you have changed the snap grid then the spacing will change. In schematic drawings it really does make sense to keep everything on the grid. Best practice is to find a snap grid setting that you like (if the standard templates don't suit) and stick with it. Leave snap to grid on during schematic drawing and enjoy. Do reach out if you have any questions or if something doesn't add up. Best Conrad
  3. Hi @kosbax Cut/paste or select and change the Layer popup in the Object Info Palette. Conrad
  4. @alexmootv Hi Alex, glad to be of help! Our mission is to give designers access to meals, sleep and a social life !!! Our Tech Pubs team do a very thorough job of documenting the features of ConnectCAD and Vectorworks in general. I think the problem is that there's a lot of it and it is quite a dense read. And let's face it you have to be a certain kind of person to want to spend your free time reading a nice thick manual ! The missing part of the puzzle as far as I'm concerned is the "how-to" section. I continue to press for this. Meanwhile, there's a lot of information on this forum but the search tools are frankly bad. Probably the best bet is to use Google and restrict the search to this site. Best offer for now. Conrad
  5. Hi Kostas, Yes there have been some changes. Mounting front / rear is controlled in the Object Info Palette - select the equipment item and use the Mounting popup. Visibility is set by class. All ConnectCAD objects are in classes that begin with "CC-" so take the opportunity to explore a bit in the Nav Palette and see what's available. You can "skin" your document by editing the class attributes (colour, line style etc.) and if the class contains text then class text styles are also applied. Cool thing is that you can override class attributes in viewports so you can create a print version for example that looks different from the design layer. Lots of new stuff to get used to 🙂 Enjoy Conrad
  6. @nickMUGS Duplicate-modify is a classic ConnectCAD workflow but there's one crucial step afterwards - Rename. ConnectCAD can't figure out the difference between intentional and unintentional duplicates. I find that running Check Drawing is a good way to make sure you haven't left any loose ends. Best Conrad
  7. @rominick thanks for the feedback. Double-wide racks have come up before. I'm assuming you mean 2 x 19in bays side-by-side in a road box - correct? You can do this by creating the road box as a symbol and embedding the 3D Rack object with the Rack Style set to Console inside it. That way only the mounting rails are created and it will look just like the real thing. The question that comes to my mind is this. If you are going to consider these as one rack, how would you label the rack U positions? And why not for example label the left and right sides as rack 2a and rack 2b? I need to see the gain from complicating this before we change things. Conrad
  8. Hi @alexmootv We made this change because we also have other customers who want much more ready-made content, and others who find themselves collaborating with ConnectCAD users across the world. For all this to work we have to fix the meaning of our application-supplied signal and connector type codes, and the device content which uses these codes. With Vectorwork 2023 we went thru the entire device database and signal and connector types making sure everything was consistent and removing duplicates. This allows us to move forward and expand the device database in an orderly way. It is not our intention to restrict your ability to have your own company idiolect if you so choose, but you will have to use different type names. If capitalization is an issue and would be a help in expanding the namespace then we could look at relaxing that. I think we have to see the wider goals here. In order to progress we have to make changes and some of those are going to negatively impact some people. In this case all I can do is to ask for your understanding. Conrad
  9. Hi @alexmootv You are right, connector panels need a little more finesse than they currently have. And it's on my list. Generally ConnectCAD concerns itself only with the connector that goes on the cable. This allows us to avoid the increasingly contentious topic of sex (connector sex!). But in Connector Panels we have to handle the mating of the chassis connector and the cable connector. We do this in incredibly crude way by swapping the M and F of the connector type - if it doesn't end in M or F we leave it alone. Nasty but it has saved us from keeping a mapping table of what mates with what. We use two special connector types <-- and --> to indicate bare wires soldered or crimped to the chassis socket. Pass-throughs for things like HDMI are not perfect right now. Thanks for the nudge! We are going to deal with this! Conrad
  10. Hi @alexmootv That's really interesting feedback. As you say there are those cases that have both input and output sockets. In these cases we just have to abandon the convention of outputs on the right, inputs on the left, and put a little water in our wine. ConnectCAD lets you have left-facing outputs. Same story with SFP's - of course it would be nice to have them all the same size and never have to edit any devices but ... manufacturers have this way of creating exactly the device that breaks our nice little model. I think we just have to accept the fact that this is what designers get the big bucks for. My 2c says work with the most common types and live with the fact that there will be exceptions. I do hear what you're saying it just doesn't distill into any new approach at this point in time I think. Appreciate your input. Conrad
  11. Hi @Ian5100 We had to move to a list browser control in order to be able to have device definitions with any number of socket groups. I agree the old way had its good points but now we don't have to compromise device data because of not having enough groups. There is always a price to pay. But as you also note there are advantages too. On Windows the list browser component needs an extra click to bring it into focus. We have noted that and submitted a bug to the team handling this. I feel your pain on that one. We will keep pressing for a solution. Conrad
  12. @Thomas Peters I think the thrust of Niko’s question was whether class-level control of attributes was enough or whether there’s a reason why object-level control is required? Let me know. Conrad
  13. Looks a bit off-topic for ConnectCAD please try reposting to a more general section.
  14. @spettittDear Simon Thanks for your detailed post. At the moment ConnectCAD doesn’t concern itself with what goes on inside a device. Not saying we won’t go there in the future. But this is heading in the direction of system modelling and I want to do it right and not just for power distribution. Im on leave right now but when I get back I’ll give your post another serious read through. Conrad
  15. Well basically guys you can do this right now. We have all the tools ready for you and you can expand them to cover any need. Signal and connector types already exist and you can add extra ones so easily. Adding an extra socket to a device is a cinch - just take the socket tool and click on the device where you want the socket to go. Creating devices is also easy and you only have to do it once, then you can save it and re-use again and again safe in the knowledge that you checked it yourself. What this discussion is actually about is us providing you with ready-made content. I'm in favor of that too. But are you sure you want to rely on stuff you haven't personally checked? When was a designer back in the day I got burned once and learned that no matter how reliable a source you are copying from the AV industry changes faster. Nobody can keep up - not even Vectorworks! By the time you have personally looked up the spec of a device you have already done 90% of the work involved in creating it. As you read the spec sheet just put the information into the Device Builder and then press OK. It doesn't get easier. Need something special - use the Device tool and add sockets manually. Save the result as a symbol or add it to the device database. Adapter? We have those too. Certainly, more ready-made content is on my personal roadmap, but I just want you to be aware of the limitations. Our primary goal is to give YOU control over your designs. Best Conrad .
  16. @nickMUGS This is not a bug. It is designed that way. Devices act like groups not symbols. Think of symbols as rubber stamps to create devices. We don't like the idea of an edit to a symbol causing unintended consequences in parts of your drawing that may not be visible to you right now. Instead, you can easily apply changes between devices using the eyedropper mode of the Device tool. It is a lot safer. And it correctly handles changes to sockets that may be connected etc. Hope that helps. Conrad
  17. @ChollyO Well let me try... first of all ConnectCAD originated in Europe where power is a much more straightforward business than in the States. Practically in all the installations I ever designed as ConnectCAD was growing up the power installation tended to be the domain of the electrical contractor who would have to sign off on the plans anyway. Our role was to provide specifications e.g. independent redundant supplies to equipment with dual PSUs, notes regarding equipment with high inrush currents etc. So basically there wasn't a need for it because the cabling was pretty obvious. The device database was originally a crowd-sourced community database that we have since tidied up. The "crowd" hardly ever added power sockets. Seems like the majority of users weren't doing power planning. So really that's the explanation. But what I'm interested in are your needs. Why not continue the conversation here or PM me and let's see what we can come up with? Maybe power planning is part of our future? Conrad
  18. This issue stems from the fact that the external socket graphics are circles. Vectorworks does not register a click inside an arc or a circle as a click on the object - you can understand the rationale for that in the context of architecture but it throws off ConnectCAD socket detection. In Vectorworks 2023 this does not happen from what I see. If you are on a lower version you can easily fix this by editing these symbols. All you need to do is draw a line across the diameter of the circle and send it to back so it doesn't show. With some geometry inside the circle Vectorworks finds it every time. Hope that helps. Conrad
  19. @CharlesD Since adapters always go on a device socket we decided to keep them light and small. I wanted to avoid clutter. In the circuit report they are listed by their symbol name and you can always put that in as a static text in the adapter when you create it. What you are showing in your drawing above is a pretty good use case. As Niko says you have lot's of possibilities to add your own linked text if you need to. In the case of your Barco I/O cards I would just put the model number in as static text inside the adapter. Once you save that breed of adapter as a symbol you have it forever. C
  20. Hi Charles, In the Parts Report you can sum the Qty column and summarize by the Item column which will give you quantities for each distinct Make+Model. Explore! Conrad
  21. Hi Nick, Sorry I can't reproduce this based on that alone. I did try but my circuits are staying obstinately connected. I will need the actual file perhaps you can PM me a dropbox link or something. Also I will need to know the Vectorworks version and the platform (Mac or Win). We will track this down as soon as we have the details. Conrad
  22. Hi @alexmootv in answer to your first question Yes, exactly. We calculate cable lengths to the insertion point of the equipment item plus any slack you define in the dialog. We do not go more precise than that because there's not much point. In the real world much depends on how installer chooses to dress the cables in the rack. Back in the day I decided to hide my estimated cable lengths from the installers to force them to use their brains! Cable length estimates calculated in CAD should always be treated with caution in my view. Well you are obviously reading my mind! It's something I'm thinking about right now. But as usual it's complicated... we have more than one kind of modular card systems: Rack frames which are mostly passive in which the cards share power supply and perhaps a control network. We already model these very adequately IMO. Devices comprising a main chassis into which various option cards can be plugged. Here I will freely admit that we do not really handle this. And there's a reason - it all becomes very manufacturer-specific. In the schematic world our new adapters would seem to be an ideal way to represent these. And the reporting is already done too. But at the moment we don't have any automated way to create the physical view. There is some information missing - the size and position of module slots in the main device. And we don't have a way to get this information other than you or someone putting it in. So short answer - the jury's out on this one. Conrad P.S. Just wanted to add that you can always double-click an equipment item and draw anything you like inside it.
  23. Yes the screenshot is from 2022. Thanks for your kind words - we do our best to listen and act upon the feedback you give us. To get the benefit of all this however... you do need to upgrade. That's what keeps us in business helping you 🙂
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