Ross McLee

Hi, I'd like to up my game a bit. I'm looking for some advice, tips, recommendations etc on how I can improve my laying out of my drawings. I am not an architect, interior designer I have never received any formal training. However I am conscious that my drawings lack a professional feel to them. Spacing, scales of the viewports, dimensions, text sizes, use of different line types/weights, shadows, annotations and labels (section/elevation markers), generally creating neat and tidy and well proportioned drawings that are pleasant to look at. All the sorts of things a good draftsperson knows about! I design audio visual systems which require me to produce schematics (which I use the excellent VW ConnectCAD for) and they are relatively simple line drawings which I can drop into a Vp and that's about it, but I also need to show equipment positioning in plan, section and elevation along with some detailing. compared to the project architect's drawings mine definitely look amateurish. Are there any good books (remember them?), on-line courses/videos that anyone can recommend? All advice gratefully appreciated, R

@Dendecko, I have often found that symbols/objects etc don't always display correctly and sometimes need to 'refresh/rerender my screen by a quick zoom or pan. I put this down to my relatively low spec machine and certainly the graphics card! I haven't experienced what you are showing specifically but would question whether it is a rendering thing on your graphics card if it is a bit on the old side?... Following

Agree - these two elements are two separate things. reporting and circuit (signal flow). In terms of reporting and grouping the 'source' of the cable runs, is there a parameter/value within a circuit object that could be used to prioritise one source location over the other, or do you think that have to be done manually within excel? ... A user field perhaps? As an aside (in keeping with forum thread rules 😉 if you didn't want to clutter the OIP with a swap source/destination button, which I get, is there a way of creating your own tool box of buttons that call scrips? I guess there is, but not ventured that far into scripting. I have a script palette which just displays the script name/descriptions, and that is saved within each file (so have to import it via Resource Manager). Your efforts are always appreciated, thanks, R

Hi All, I noticed some unusual behaviour in the device builder tool today (VW/CC 2022, Wwindows 10) For each of the socket definition drop down options it took up to 3 clicks to get the drop down list to appear (notably the cursor pointer appears as a caret) It made adding lots of sockets a bit of a pain! I tried to record a video of the steps using windows 10 game bar, but the pop-up window isn't captured, just the main window. Cheers, Ross

Thinking about this a bit more, now... This is 'easy' if there is only one dominant destination, but links between some 'source' rooms may be necessary too, so not sure how you determine which becomes a source and which becomes a destination. Perhaps some kind of ranking?.. could get messy. Example: A and B are remote room, r = rack room A - R & A - R ... is same as 2x A - R so you can assign R as dominant destination room B - R & R - B ... is same as 2x B - R so you can assign R as dominant destination room again A - B is same as B - A but which room is dominant as they were both considered source rooms above? May be the dominance of the destination room can be determined automatically by the number of cables going in/out of that room so that it becomes more significant as the destination (hub 2) if there are the same (in this case both A & B rooms have 2 cables in/out) other it is done in alphabetical order or user is prompted to choose the source. <started to cry now> LOL R

Thanks @Nikolay Zhelyazkov. On a similar thought... When producing a cable schedule for installs we like to have a consistent approach to pulling the cable runs. So that racks/rooms are the 'hubs' to all the remote locations. I haven't tried it out yet, but having the room source/destination interchangeable so that all devices from each location are grouped together as, say, the source and they are pulled to the hub point (a rack room) as the destination regardless of signal flow direction. Pulling a cable from Room 1 to Rack Room is the same as pulling a cable from Rack Room to Room 1. Being able to set all Room 1 references to "source" and all rack room references to destination would be great. That way an installer can be given a schedule and stand in a room and know that all the room sources listed are going back to the rack room. Does that make sense? R

Hi All, I was wondering if any investigation/progress was made in to being able to swap the source/destination of circuits where you have an I/O socket at each end of the circuit (e.g. LAN/Ethernet or RS232 type connections). It often looks neater when using arrow connectors that all the devices connected to say, an Ethernet switch, are all going in the same direction either or if the main signal flow is correctly shown (like a video steam OUT from a device, or stream In for a recording device). When connecting these types of devices it would be nice to be able to swap them round after they are connected to make them correct, instead of having to connect them together in the right order to start with. Thanks as always, R

@Chris Rogers - you are not alone 😞 We have seen this same behaviour with VW22 Resource manager on Windows 10 today. CTRL+R doesn't display the resource manager, unable to check the box from the Windows/palettes menu doesn't work either. My colleague is working on schematics with the Connectcad plugin. R

Hi All, Getting to grips with VW/CC'22 and liking some of the new features 🙂 Well done all! Looking for recommendations on how best to document circuits that have been deliberately left un/disconnected, (e.g. a cable that has been pulled out of a patch panel) but could be reconnected later. Or a cable installed in readiness for future requirements. I have used <EXTERNAL>s so far but notice that the connected end of the cable shows the name '<EXT>' as the device name plus the External Name, in my case "NOT CONNECTED". Any tips welcome. Thanks, R

Hi! Is it possible to have different line weights in the snap to grid, lines? I see you can have a snap grid and reference grid - Is there any way these can be made visible at the same time? When creating ConnectCAD schematics for example. I have a 4x4 unit snap grid but I like to space may components out on say a 8 unit grid. The 16x616 grid just needs to be shown in a slightly heavier line weight. In AutoCAD I think they refer to this as a 'major' grid line. @Conrad Preenbeing able to 'force' snapping of ConnectCAD devices to the major grid would be a handy feature to speed the laying out of devices uniformly (horizontally primarily, not so sure about vertical though! Thanks, R

Very interesting... I was curious about this too. Is there no easy way of determining if a socket has an 'active' connection? (I don't know what that means in reality) ... I'm still very new to VW and scripting for me is very basic, using the custom selection tool, creating a script and then apply the changes to the selected objects! So if it could be done this way I would be ok I guess. A possible next step on this journey could be resizing the outline of the device so that it only contains the last 'visible'/'active' socket reducing the clutter of unused sockets. A 64x64 matrix with only half of the i/o used for example. Love ConnectCAD, it can only get better. R

Perhaps a bit of fun, here. But I did a connector check on my last drawing. and got the attached! Glad I only did one check at a time (this took my laptop about 20 minutes to compile. Unfortunately, I can't do anything with the information it is just too dense! 🙂 LOL R

Hi All, Sorry if I have asked this (possibly in a round about way) but. Is there a way to quickly force all broken circuits to reset themselves. I have recently moved a whole pile of devices and connected circuits from one schematic layer to another and in the process broken all the circuit objects. I do other things that break them quite often too. 😞 I know I can select all circuits (custom selection tool/script) then nudge them all up a grid line and then back down (I use SHIFT+UP, SHIFT+DOWN) which has the desired effect, just wondered if there was a more official way. With my limited laptop spec 2000+ circuits can take quite a while. TIA. R

I'm using VW21 - the find/replace text tool doesn't seem to have changed since this OP. Find next, then the next, then the next is not there. A summary of all the finds in a table if there are lots perhaps (see AutoCADs equivalent FIND command) Next release? @TomWhiteLight ... here's hoping 🙂 R

@Nina Agelvis, @Nikolay Zhelyazkov, We have seen similar behaviour in some of our schematics as we have been 'learning the ways'. VW21. We attributed our problems to moving circuits and devices together not just devices. Or in some cases we had grouped devices and circuits together (which we now know is a big no no !) In many cases we have found snapping ALL objects to grid (CTRL+-) then select all circuits - using the custom select tool (or script from it) then nudge up and nudge down (Shift UP/Shift DOWN) will 'reinitialise' the circuit connections. A bit dirty but works. Good luck. R