Device behavior in Rack Elevation

[Ean]

I have noticed an oddness with the display of devices being different when in a rack object and when outside of it.

 

When the device is within, or partially within a 2D rack, it shows make/model and is sized correctly.

 

 

When a device is outside of the rack it loses its dimension and data.

 

 

 

I will often put devices in the same room as the rack while not actually in a rack. This helps with getting all devices in the correct room for reports. (The rack elevation viewport is typically then cropped to show only the rack.) During the design phase it nice to seed how many rack units a device is before dragging it into a rack and to see the make model without having to look at the Object Info Palette.

 

I imagine this has something to do with the 2D/3D representations of devices. I tried dragging a device into a 3D rack but nothing changed from the "outside the rack" representation of the device, or line up with a rack space. Clearly, I have a lot to learn about the 3D rack tool.

 

Also, the rack unit value specified in the device builder does not appear in the OIP for a device in the Rack Elevation. Specifying it manually in the Rack Elevation does not change the behavior described above.

 

Ean

[Conrad Preen]

The 3D rack object has one purpose - to allow you to visualise 2D racks and their contents on floor plans.

 

You construct your rack layout by placing 2D Racks and dragging your equipment items into them. When the equipment item is in a rack it draws itself in front view, when it's outside the rack it draws itself in current layer view. This is a change from previous versions of ConnectCAD and was made to avoid the need for a special layer name Rack Elevation. This is better for people who work in other languages than English.

 

Conrad