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Documenting unconnected cables/circuits


Ross McLee

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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

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  • 1 month later...

This is something that we have all been thinking about as power users. For now I am just using a device block to hold the cables and label the block as spare with connectors as XXX with the signal type that matches the cable. Basically an AV plate without it being a plate.

 

From what I understand right now in 2022 you cannot do a logical schematic first, then drop everything down on the Physical 3D schematic later or go back and forth.

 

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
On 9/29/2021 at 6:20 PM, Ross McLee said:

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

- If I get this correctly, you have your disconnected circuits actually connected to an external? Or do you want to have them being actually disconnected? If you want them to be actually disconnected you can get them all in the same worksheet by filtering the worksheet to get only the circuits with empty values for Source/Destination Device Name. Otherwise, you can have them connected to a device/external with the same name that you consider for not connected, or just use empty name and apply the same trick with the worksheet as above, just look for the name that you have chosen to use.

 

14 hours ago, Kevin Krautle said:

From what I understand right now in 2022 you cannot do a logical schematic first, then drop everything down on the Physical 3D schematic later or go back and forth.

- Actually, the Create Equipment menu command (which is Update Rack Elevation but renamed and working a bit differently, check the help for this) should be doing exactly what you are describing, creating Physical 3D equipment from regular 2D schematics.

 

Let me know if you have any further questions or anything from above is not clear.

 

Best Regards,

Nikolay Zhelyazkov

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

My 2c worth...

 

Park your spare circuits on externals. You can then re-purpose them at a later stage. If you name the externals SPARE 1, SPARE 2 ... then you can easily see then in the list.

 

Externals represent the world outside your system - those cables that go to other places but need to be documented. Externals treat the outside world as a device named <EXT> with sockets named with your External Name. But you can also assign External to Drop Points (the physical locations where a bunch of cables is delivered) using the Name popup in the Object Info Palette. That way they can be included in the cable path model too and you can extract the length of the cables.

 

Hope I've helped.

 

Conrad

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