Hi Rob,

You guys are going to hate me for this post !

As I went through the forum yesterday, I pay particular attention to a post of zuk123 available here: http://forums.stardraw.com/Topic9157.aspx

Although I absolutely don’t share is point of view about the ready-made cables being products (probably because I’ve been a cable hair dresser during more than 15 years in my professional life and that the crap Chinese made cable assemblies largely contribute to the extinction of that activity) I must admit that it is time to have a real improvement in the way Stardraw handles cables.

I think we had the same conversation with each and every update I bought since ShuttleCADback in 94 or so.

In a fixed installation, you do make extensive use of different type of cables and you look at standardize the range of what you use mainly for stock reason.

Also when possible you combine several cables into a multicore to reduce the number of cables you pull.

Almost 20 years after, we are still nowhere with this! Yes the cables are easier to draw, they move along with parts, but these things are in place since years. Anyway this is not the topic.

Cable report is a super tools for installer and as such I paid particular attention to this part in my discovering of SD7.

We now have a beautiful excel sheet with up to 43 attributes being referenced in it. A dream right?

Well not exactly!

What is the purpose of this list?

1 pull all your cables: well you are nowhere near to what you need here. The first issue being that this list hasn’t got a clue about your intention to combine lines into multicores so all this is a manual process, and obviously all the effort being done to do this in Excel are not reflected on your drawing ever!

2 extract a list of the cable types you need to order…

3 count your connectors needs: Well here is the example I go out of a mixer (fem XLR on the cable) into an amp (male XLR on thecable) and the cable list has got absolutely no clue of the type of connectorto be used!

4 Produce the information to be printed on labels. Thanks god, Label printing softwares are really helping here with not too much headache. They are able to combine onto the same label the information included in label (SPK001) with the amplifier model LA4 and its number created by the user! And the start port in order to get : SPK001 - LA4 – 1 - Out ½

All, I said all of the additional work can be avoided by creating a proper cable selection flow.

I spend a bit of time trying to draw down the decision process that would need to be implemented in SDx (hopefully 7) to make what is likely to be the dream of us all.

The flow is visible here below and I attached a PDF version for a better quality.

As you can notice, when ready to draw a cable, you can choose to do it the traditional way for fast production of visual or to go through the advanced method.

Note that you are able to improve the quality of your drawing by providing more precise information about the cable to be used at a later stage if you originally selected the usual method.

With the advanced method, you can either select the type of cable from a library that is in all way similar to the product library or to work out of a generic custommade on the fly cable that you can obviously save in the library for future use.

I bet my ass in the most complicated installation you don’t use more than 20 types of cables and if you are a smart installer, they are constantly stocked and available.

The cables are color coded by default to increase the visibility of the drawings.

Ultimately this process would provide an accurate drawing of your cable split in the bloc schematic environment as visible here below.

The cable is one (identified along with the first pair for instance), and to each pair would correspond a line with all the details as per the current list but no cable. Does that make sense?

I feel I laid here the base of a community brainstorming that could lead to a major update of our favorite installation drawing software.

I would be really pleased to have all the inputs of other users about this post.

Don’t just read it, contribute!

Thanks

Christian

Christian Delvaux

Back in Belgium !

Hi Chris,

Thanks for taking what was clearly a lot of time and effort to communicate your thoughts on this. Yes, we're always looking for ways to improve things and this is a very big topic; we too would welcome input from other users of the forum.

Kind regards,
Rob Robinson
Stardraw.com

Rob,

I really do love your answers, they are all really politically correct and positive, would love to learn how to do this…

There were a dozen visits on the post but no inputs yet.

So here is a little addendum, I listed here below all the cables I faced in my life.

The list could populate the drop down menu of the user defined cable (which is a library that could actually be pre- populated directly by Stardraw.

Note that only the multicore cables (going to separate connectors) do require a split visual and different handling in the cable list export.

I listed around 70 different types of cable. Everybody is welcome to propose any addition to the list based on his experience (not a cable catalogue, please) as I might not have yet done an installation where you had to flush the toilet using the lighting desk ;-)

A little word about color coding of cables: it is absolutely mandatory to be able to user define the colors of the cables.

I use the same type of colors since ages but it is really hard to impose a code to anyone even within a big AV contractor company.

I even met draftsmen using different colors from one drawing to another!

I personally define color not as per different type of cable but type of signal they handel. Blue for audio, red for speaker, turquoise for AES, etc

A data base containing all these cables should be editable to define the preferred color for audio cable etc.. and allow the user to enter his preferred brand and ref for each type of cable. This being attributes as already extensively used in SD7.

The trickiest part is probably the creation of the visual of the split.
Rob it is interesting to have inputs of user but it seems to me it is also very important to get inputs from your developers. We could come up with a million ways to implement the functionality we want but you guys should stop us early enough if we are improving a method that would be a developer dead end street (understand not feasible)
I really like the flow that I propose you, but I could as well propose the split of a cable to be a generic part to put at the end of the cable we draw with the current version and start to brainstorm on how we could create the excel sheet to deal with the cables from the end of the split to the different product. This might be way easier to implement and could satisfy a majority of users…but it is so 2010 ;-)

Thanks for reading, please collaborate !

Christian

PS the copy paste from word sucks!

1. Audio analogue:

a. Single pair:

- Single audio installation wiring pair (diam 3.5mm)

- Microphone type cable

- Higher quality microphone type cable

- Starquad cable (used once in my all life never in multicore but it does exist)

- Unbalanced side by side cable (multicore?)

- Instrument cable

b. Multicore

- 2 pairs Round

- 2 pairs Side by side

- 4 pairs

- 8 pairs

- 12 pairs

- 16 pairs

- 24 pairs

- 36 pairs

- 48 pairs

2. Audio analogue Digital:

a. Single pair:

- Single audio installation wiring pair(diam 3.5mm)

- « Microphone » type cable (diam 6.5mm)

b. Multicore

- 2 pairs

- 4 pairs

- 8 pairs

- 12 pairs

- 16 pairs

- 24 pairs

3. Video cables analog / Digital:

a. Single line:

- Single video installation wiring video(diam 3.5mm)

- « RG59 » type cable (diam 6.5mm)

- Higher quality video cable

- S-video side by side cable (anyone still using that ?)

- SDI cable

- Triax

- Scart cable (considered a single line as they are using a single connector)

-HDMI (considered a single line as they are using a single connector)

b. Multicore (usually two diameters are available, mini and full size)

- 2 coax

- 3 coax

- 4 coax

- 5 coax (RGBHV)

- 20 coax (did anyone ever used that? Mini model only)

I have ignored composite multicores as they are usually premade cable or using a single connector at the end which hence doesn’t require the production of a split visual in bloc schematic environment.

We could consider combined audio / video cable but this is likely to really complicate the implementation of the updated cable handling module into SD with a very limited benefit.

4. Speaker cables (here the conductor section can become either an additional parameter or a different entry into the library):

a. Single line:

- 2 cores in one sleeve (round cables)

- Side by side cables (I wouldn’t use this outside of my living room)

b. Multicore

- 4 cores in one sleeve

- 6 cores in one sleeve

- 8 cores in one sleeve

Possible sections (sorry, metric here!):

1.5mm²

2.5mm²

4mm²

Higher section exists for long runs but those are usually electrical cables!

5. Control cables:

a. Single line:

- RS232

- RS422

- CAT 5 -6 - 7

- Contact closure (2 conductors in a sleeve)

- DMX cables (SD7 does not handle lighting right?)

- Fiber optic

- Intercom

b. Multicore

- Multicore fiber optic cable (several entries)

- DMX multicores (SD7 does not handle lighting right?)

- Multicore control cable (usually goes point to point and could be considered single line)

6. RF Cables:

a. Single line:

- Antenna cable RG58

- Higher quality antenna cable

- Satellite dish cable

b. Multicore

- Never ever used one

7. Power Cables (I personally never draw the power circuitry in any installation over the last 25 years!):

a. Single line:

- 3 conductors in a sleeve

b. Multicore

- Don’t see any use unless in lighting and in this case it is a point to point connection anyway.

Christian Delvaux

Back in Belgium !

I too would be grateful for different cable colours to type of signal. Mic Level, Line Level, Speaker Level, AES, Network AVB etc. Also if there were separate layers set for the different cable types I think that would be useful too

Larry

Thanks Larry for your input, your are hopefully the first of a long list.

The way I discribed my dream of a cable selection flow, you would have the color code fully editable to do it the way you want would that be signal or cable related.

With regards to the layer, if I understand you well, you would like to have a microphone cable drawn by default in the audio circuit path and a RG59 into the video layer, am I right?

Interesting

Christian

Christian Delvaux

Back in Belgium !

Yes

here here, another vote for cable as product and cable color finds right layer/color/linetype from editable attribute list. Good discussion.

I would also welcome such an advanced handling of cables/cabling! Currently we manually change colors and line types of all the cables and try to keep a list of the most frequent cable types we use and have on stock - having these cables in a "cable library" would simplify drawing and save us many hours.

-------------------------------
auviso - audio visual solutions ag

ch-6010 kriens
switzerland

Hi Chris, wow would this be fantastic. Your suggestions would be a fantastic update - and SD would likely gain markets with it. It's importance is paramount, for we all know that when a system fails the first thing checked is the cable/connections. We also know that if it is a product fault, the cables are checked to prevent a repeat failure (AC impedance, etc.) Finally, we all know the difference in costs to service if the technician doesn't have the as-built drawings with relevant details to prevent billable head-scratching and ceiling staring time....

My contribution to support this would be to allow the user to define the quantity of labels on the cable; some will need the 3 as standard but putting the ohms target, connector types (2 or more), wire types, plenum/non plenum, and even link to notes/scope of work would be helpful.

Finally - having an app for field installation details from reading the drawings/reports for reading/viewing all SD7 data would save paper, prep time, and cabling time. Pinouts, breakout cables, etc... Especially if it integrated to other tech tool apps that confirmed the laws of physics as intended at design time....

You sir, are on to something.

I started using Stardraw Design 7 (my company got it for me) and was surpriced that a working cable managment tool isn't included. Cable management is just such an integral part of this whole process.
Christian perfectly described how it should work! Please Rob make it happen as soon as possible!