Source/Destination swap for I/O conectors

[Ross McLee]

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

[Nikolay Zhelyazkov]

Hello @Ross McLee,

 

We did not manage to get this in VW2022, but we still have it in mind and we are considering it.

 

Best Regards,

Nikolay Zhelyazkov

[Ross McLee]

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

 

 

[Thomas K.]

That would be nice to have!! Thumbs up!

[Ross McLee]

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

 

 

 

 

 

[Conrad Preen]

@Ross McLee

 

In this thread we are talking about 2 different things: reporting, and circuit/connect tool operation.

 

And I get what you're saying. Back in the day my installation manager used to take the lists I sent him into Excel and sort and filter them by location so as to share the work between installers. Vectorworks worksheets aren't quite as powerful as Excel but you can still do a lot. For example, you can change the criteria to filter for particular locations, you can sort by up to 3 columns. You're by no means stuck with what we give you. But let's face it, it's not Excel and re-inventing the spreadsheet seems a bit pointless when Vectorworks can import and export Excel files directly.

 

Circuit source and destination reflect signal flow where this is one-way. I don't like the idea of changing that because it will kill off some ideas I have for the future. As far as swapping over IO-IO circuits goes - yes could be done but this would be a great little script project. Grab the path of a selected circuit and all it's parameters, delete it and re-create the circuit the other way around. I don't really like cluttering up the OIP with a Swap button that is only enabled for Io-IO circuits. ConnectCAD is confusing enough for new users, I want to simplify it.

 

My 2c worth

 

Conrad

[Ross McLee]

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

[Conrad Preen]

Well there is a place for a suite of power scripts. And you can always create these as Vectorscript or Python plug-ins. I'm not as in touch with the scripting community as I used to be and the websites come and go. But Google can find them and there's quite a lot of resources and examples out there. I will certainly help support anyone wanting to develop scripts for ConnectCAD.

 

Conrad