Cable vs Circuit

[CharlesD]

Hello All-

 

As I dive into cable routing, I feel like I've lost the plot on the difference between a cable and a circuit.

 

When you connect two schematic devices together you create a "Circuit" object. It looks like this object defaults to a "Cable" of "null". It has fields for "Cable Length", "Calculated Cable Length", "Cable Type", "Cable Outside Diameter". So there's a lot of references to "cable".

 

A single circuit object can contain any number of "Circuits"-- (i.e. you connect from a socket with 10x circuits to a socket with 10x circuits-- your circuit object has 10x circuits)

 

It looks like I can assign any circuit on the drawing to a user defined "Cable".

 

The "Edit Cabling Tool" edits cabling in a drawing. For a connection between two equipment racks with 20 circuits, the dialog will show me a "Cable Count" of 20. The dialog also has a "Cable" field, but when I assign "Cable" to the circuits in that route, the "Cable" field is not populated with that information.

 

Is anyone able to point me towards any documentation on Cable vs Circuit? When and why would I want to use a "Cable"?

[Conrad Preen]

Hello Charles,

 

Things are a little blurry but that's not necessarily a bad thing. ConnectCAD has always leaned towards jeans and T-shirt rather than suit and tie.

 

Broadly speaking a Circuit shows a signal path. The Circuit object has a Cable parameter. If 2 Circuits have the same value set in the Cable parameter then they can be said to belong to the same physical cable. The Spotlight Cable object allows you to model the physical cable directly and if you have drawn Sp Cables on your layout drawing, these will appear as choices in the Circuit object's Cable parameter popup.

 

You may not want to draw a Cable object for each physical cable. It can get pretty tedious in a large installation. So there are other options: in the ConnectCAD Setting dialog Cables pane, you can define cable names for your multicores and these too will appear in the Circuit object's Cable parameter popup. This let's you specify those circuits that are part of multicores.

 

Otherwise we conflate the idea of circuit and cable so as to keep things simple for the one-to-one case. So onwards to the physical world...

 

Most circuits / cables in installations follow common paths. Provision of cable paths is costly and you don't want your cables snaking around everywhere for aesthetic and safety reasons. So we use Cable Path objects to model the paths circuits and cables follow. In ConnectCAD we use the Cable Route tool to place our cable paths. This tool is specialised towards permanent installations where cable paths run mostly horizontally with vertical sections to accommodate height changes. You first place your Drop Points where you want cabling to be delivered, and then use the Cable Route tool to join them up. Drop Points are useful for defining locations in the early stages of a project. Racks and Equipment also function the same way - cable paths can terminate on them directly.

 

Once you have your path network created you can Analyse Cable Routes to make sure all circuits can reach their intended destinations. Correct if necessary and then use Calculate Cable Lengths to estimate the length of each circuit through the cable path network.

 

The Edit Cabling Tool let's you see which circuits are using a given path segment and it allows you to assign circuits to alternate paths, and to assign extra circuits not yet on the schematic. 

 

So a lot of power and flexibility there. And yes, a lot to get your head around. 

 

Hope this brief intro has helped a bit .

 

Conrad

 

[CharlesD]

On 11/13/2025 at 12:51 AM, Conrad Preen said:

Hello Charles,

 

Things are a little blurry but that's not necessarily a bad thing. ConnectCAD has always leaned towards jeans and T-shirt rather than suit and tie.

 

Broadly speaking a Circuit shows a signal path. The Circuit object has a Cable parameter. If 2 Circuits have the same value set in the Cable parameter then they can be said to belong to the same physical cable. The Spotlight Cable object allows you to model the physical cable directly and if you have drawn Sp Cables on your layout drawing, these will appear as choices in the Circuit object's Cable parameter popup.

 

You may not want to draw a Cable object for each physical cable. It can get pretty tedious in a large installation. So there are other options: in the ConnectCAD Setting dialog Cables pane, you can define cable names for your multicores and these too will appear in the Circuit object's Cable parameter popup. This let's you specify those circuits that are part of multicores.

 

Otherwise we conflate the idea of circuit and cable so as to keep things simple for the one-to-one case. So onwards to the physical world...

 

Most circuits / cables in installations follow common paths. Provision of cable paths is costly and you don't want your cables snaking around everywhere for aesthetic and safety reasons. So we use Cable Path objects to model the paths circuits and cables follow. In ConnectCAD we use the Cable Route tool to place our cable paths. This tool is specialised towards permanent installations where cable paths run mostly horizontally with vertical sections to accommodate height changes. You first place your Drop Points where you want cabling to be delivered, and then use the Cable Route tool to join them up. Drop Points are useful for defining locations in the early stages of a project. Racks and Equipment also function the same way - cable paths can terminate on them directly.

 

Once you have your path network created you can Analyse Cable Routes to make sure all circuits can reach their intended destinations. Correct if necessary and then use Calculate Cable Lengths to estimate the length of each circuit through the cable path network.

 

The Edit Cabling Tool let's you see which circuits are using a given path segment and it allows you to assign circuits to alternate paths, and to assign extra circuits not yet on the schematic. 

 

So a lot of power and flexibility there. And yes, a lot to get your head around. 

 

Hope this brief intro has helped a bit .

 

Conrad

 

 

Thanks Conrad, this is detailed and informative as always!

The tradeoffs and design decisions make sense. I will have to continue to get my head and workflow around where/how circuits and cables are similar-- but it does seem like the tool as the flexibility to accomodate all use cases.

[Bluetones]

On 11/13/2025 at 3:51 AM, Conrad Preen said:

Hello Charles,

 

Things are a little blurry but that's not necessarily a bad thing. ConnectCAD has always leaned towards jeans and T-shirt rather than suit and tie.

 

Broadly speaking a Circuit shows a signal path. The Circuit object has a Cable parameter. If 2 Circuits have the same value set in the Cable parameter then they can be said to belong to the same physical cable. The Spotlight Cable object allows you to model the physical cable directly and if you have drawn Sp Cables on your layout drawing, these will appear as choices in the Circuit object's Cable parameter popup.

 

You may not want to draw a Cable object for each physical cable. It can get pretty tedious in a large installation. So there are other options: in the ConnectCAD Setting dialog Cables pane, you can define cable names for your multicores and these too will appear in the Circuit object's Cable parameter popup. This let's you specify those circuits that are part of multicores.

 

Otherwise we conflate the idea of circuit and cable so as to keep things simple for the one-to-one case. So onwards to the physical world...

 

Most circuits / cables in installations follow common paths. Provision of cable paths is costly and you don't want your cables snaking around everywhere for aesthetic and safety reasons. So we use Cable Path objects to model the paths circuits and cables follow. In ConnectCAD we use the Cable Route tool to place our cable paths. This tool is specialised towards permanent installations where cable paths run mostly horizontally with vertical sections to accommodate height changes. You first place your Drop Points where you want cabling to be delivered, and then use the Cable Route tool to join them up. Drop Points are useful for defining locations in the early stages of a project. Racks and Equipment also function the same way - cable paths can terminate on them directly.

 

Once you have your path network created you can Analyse Cable Routes to make sure all circuits can reach their intended destinations. Correct if necessary and then use Calculate Cable Lengths to estimate the length of each circuit through the cable path network.

 

The Edit Cabling Tool let's you see which circuits are using a given path segment and it allows you to assign circuits to alternate paths, and to assign extra circuits not yet on the schematic. 

 

So a lot of power and flexibility there. And yes, a lot to get your head around. 

 

Hope this brief intro has helped a bit .

 

Conrad

 

Is there a video of all these steps together somewhere? I keep finding bits and pieces in different places instead of a clean tutorial.