Field Cable vs Rack Cable

[Michael Henson]

I would love to have a way to change the cable arrow labeling to a different color for cable that is in the field vs ones that are in the rack. To my knowledge right now there is no way to edit or define the symbol that the arrow is using. It's just using the default.

[Conrad Preen]

Hi Michael,

 

The color of circuits is set by default to the class color for the particular signal type. You can (or soon will be) able to change from using class color to your own color selection using the Vectorworks Attributes Palette i.e. in the normal way. The color is applied to the whole object including the arrow marker at the end. I don't see any way to change that short of you manually placing extra objects over each cable end. In any case ConnectCAD doesn't have a way of "knowing" what is a field cable, so you would have to assign this somehow. Am I missing anything?

 

I just tried overriding the marker style and found that I couldn't - I will look into why that is, maybe that would give you a visual indication.

 

Best

 

Conrad

[Michael Henson]

I don't want to change the color of the cable. I need to change the color of the text. Basically duplicate skt_txt_ to a different name and apply the new symbol to specified text at the end of an arrow. I know it would be a manual process but would allow to signify to installers which cables are going where when they do mass pre-builds of cables.

[Conrad Preen]

Hi Michael,

 

The skt_txt... symbol is the text displayed by the socket. The label text at the end of the arrow is built-in to the circuit object so it isn't really possible to change it. Since as you say this would be applied manually it might be better to look for another way to designate field cables. For example add a coloured dot next to the text.

 

This is a perfect application for Marionette. You could create a macro that can read the circuits source and destination location parameters and add extra graphics to the circuit. The trick to developing these things is to start off simple - just create a dot - then control the position of the dot and work backwards from there. Once you get it, it's not so intimidating.

 

Once you start getting the computer to work for you, you never look back.

 

Conrad

 

[Michael Henson]

I’ve been thinking more about this. The goal is to identify which cables are used exclusively in a rack vs which ones will run outside a rack. Since all gear once placed in a rack is identified with rack information, could you not leverage that info and compare it to the gear it is connected to? If the gear it connects to also shows that it is in the same rack then that is one text color for the end of the arrow as well as the socket text in the device. If the connecting gear is not in that rack then another text color?

[Conrad Preen]

@JimWoodward Hey Jim, this sounds to me like Michael's wish could be a data visualization thing. What do you think?
 

Michael,

Your request is very specific to your way of doing drawings. Other people will have other ideas. I understand what you are trying to achieve. Making changes to the software for this purpose involves a whole process of implementation and extensive testing. So I think that we should first look for a  solution in the existing powerful facilities of Vectorworks. Let's see if Jim has any thoughts on this.

 

Conrad