Chris has described to a Tee something that I believe is missing from StarDraw 7. Please include this as a part of the standard package, not an additional module.

Hi Chris,

thank you for the wonderful input on this. I completely agree with the need of such management.
Here are a few of my ideas. (its kind of late, so pardon the lack of coherence, if there is any)

Would it be valuable to just create a "Cable Preset"?
The process of creating such presets would be similar to what Chris described, but instead of creating them as Symbols, it would just populate the attributes with data from the preset. For example:
When in the Audio Path layer,
Select the cable tool,
Preset selector appears where you can select the type of cable you would like. Which, would in turn, just change all the parameters of the attributes.
Same for Video layer, Control, User and etc.

As an option, there could be a secondary cable tool: "multicore cable" that you could select a different set of presets.

Maybe SD7 could take a page from QSC and their DSP system QSys.
the video below explains how they handle "snake" cable routing. I wouldn't mind having something similar in SD7
http://qsctraining.com/education/courses/qsys-training-level-one/wiring-basics/software-overview2-wiring-basics-part-b/

Yet another think that could be "borrowed" from QSC would be what they call "Signal Names". Simply put, its just a way to label the signal path to be picked up at a different area (or page) of the drawing. This would be specially crucial to keep track of connections between multiple schematic drawings.
Here is the video on it:
http://qsctraining.com/education/courses/qsys-training-level-one/wiring-basics/software-overview2-wiring-basics-part-a/

I'll read this again tomorrow and say to myself, what the heck was I thinking!!!

Thanks for listening.

Gil Parente

Gil Parente,

Design & Integration

Entertainment Arts, Inc.

gil@eartsinc.com

Gil,

It is never too late to come with a great idea.
Additionally I have been busy more than expected over the last month and as there was no show I could attend where Rob was exhibiting there was no such an emergency to finalize my full report.

BUT NOW THERE IS !!!!

Rob is surely going to attend ISE in Amsterdam and so do I, hence I have a month to compile all the late wishes/idea with regards to the implementation of a proper cabling tool to be added hoping that Rob is not going to bin it because it is already implemented. If I was naughty I would say that I'm asking him some of these features since 15 years so I feel on the safe side.

Anyway, please shoot, bring great ideas, I'll include what makes sense.

I'm not completely sure I understand you preset suggestion on top of that my idea of a cable tools would not lead to the creation of a symbol (at least not anymore, must admit it has been at some point)
So your idea would be to basically affect a cable drawn as we do it currently with some special set of attributes? I have to re-read my "book" to figure out how far I stand from that method with mine but not much, however said that way, it might ease the life of the developer.

I pay particular attention when you send your post (took me long to answer you, sorry) to the QSC videos and yes there are real cool ideas to draw multicore in that software.
Unfortunately it is a DSP programming software and as such it connects outputs to inputs using virtual lines.

We are using real cables and within the multicore the signal in some pairs could go one way while in others the opposite way. Additionally the ins and outs of equipment are organised on separate "sides" of the equipment in block schematic making it simply impossible to handle as shown on the video.

With regards to the signal name, the subject is fully detailed in my "book"

What I would do is to give another 10 days to every one to come with last minute ideas in order to give me some time to compile the new stuff. After that I could send my book to who shows interest before submitting it officially to Rob.

Cheers and happy new year to all

Christian

Christian Delvaux

Back in Belgium !

I did my share!

A nice and beautiful folder was transmitted to Rob at the ISE show containing all what I thing should be included into a proper cable tool into Stardraw.
The report was discussed the next day.
The summary is that the Stardraw team and myself are tuned to the same frequency, some of my ideas appeared to be really interesting in the approach.
Now we only have to wait....



Christian Delvaux

Back in Belgium !

Hi Chris!
YES! Count another voice in the chorus. My company bought SD for me and it seemed like such obvious functionality would be set up for us, I've been learning the program and was convinced I was just too stupid to figure out how to do such basic things as you mention. I haven't asked because I wanted to simply find what I was missing. Now I see your post and I see that I'm not quite so stupid as I thought.

Guys, this is a pretty big deal really... please find a way to implement this functionality. Some of us assumed the product could be set up like this when we bought it since these are pretty basic needs.

Hi guys,

do we have an update on this "Advanced Cable Management" functionality?
thx

Gil

Gil Parente,

Design & Integration

Entertainment Arts, Inc.

gil@eartsinc.com

Hi Gil,

It's something we are working on and as soon as we have news we will let everyone know.

Kind regards,
Rob Robinson
Stardraw.com

Hi Rob,

This is your usual answer ;-) no need to say that after all the work I put into my "report" I'm also highly interested to know in which direction it develops... I understand the update is not going to be there overnight, but at this stage you probably figured out the commercial (chargeble module or implemented into the main program) and the technical (as part of the main library or a separate library to deal with cables only) aspect of the update.
Can we know something?

Thanks

Chris

Christian Delvaux

Back in Belgium !

Hi Chris,

I realise you're eager to know something, but we will only reveal new features when they are ready for launch. As always, the answer to 'when is launch' is 'when it is ready'.

Patience please.

Kind regards,
Rob Robinson
Stardraw.com

man.. working on a project now that I could really use at least a Attribute Preset. I'd love to be able to select all my cables and load a preset and walla!!!! all connector, signal type, manufacturer and etc fills.

:-)

hopefully soon enough.

Gil Parente,

Design & Integration

Entertainment Arts, Inc.

gil@eartsinc.com