Can the default symbol labels be [Manufacturer] and [Model Number] instead of static text that needs to be changed every time you Create a new UDP from existing product?
If the font sizes for the labels could also conform to a default font size that would be useful too.
This means when creating similar products we don't have to edit each block symbol and every rack symbol view - it is very tedious to keep doing this especially on older systems, where saving a symbol takes a long time and sometimes crashes...!

Thanks for your post.

When a UDP is created from an existing product the symbols are - and must be - an exact duplicate of the symbols that represent the existing product.  Older product symbols will have hard-coded Manufacturer and Model Number labels, but products added to the library more recently, since the end of 2017, have [Manufacturer] and [Model Number] fields, and these will be duplicated in the UDP symbols based on them.

Font sizes in symbols are standardized, but older symbols may from time to time deviate from the current standard.  Unfortunately it is not practical to review the entire back catalog of tens of thousands of legacy symbols simply to apply changes to the size of a few labels.  In any case, IO labels are standardized on-the-fly when symbols are inserted into a Block Schematic drawing, based on the current setting of the Document property "IO Label Height".   

I'm troubled by your comment that suggests that saving a symbol sometimes crashes.  We have not previously heard of this and have had no prior reports.  Under what circumstances do you experience a 'crash' and what exact steps can we follow to reproduce such an event?  If it is reliably reproducible we can work on a fix.


Kind regards,
Rob Robinson
Stardraw.com

Hi Rob, 

Thanks for the reply, regarding the crashes seems as if the laptop used (Lenovo Yoga 720) was under heavy load. When saving a symbol it behaves as if it is attempting save multiple times, and the software goes from responsive to non-responsive several times in a few seconds. Some times during this, the program stays unresponsive and crashes. Not a great description but I will attempt to film the screen and post here.
It could well be the hardware is struggling to cope with other programs open in the background!

Regarding the UDP, a follow up request would be to have attribute labels in the symbols by default? A *lot* of the time when someone creates a block and uses the wizard to create the rack symbol it suffices - but in their haste they have usually got the model number/description incorrect or not quite in the format we'd like. Obviously this is easy enough to change in the Product Information, however it requires going into each symbol and its respective views to then edit the labels. 

Hi Haz,

When you Save in the Symbol Editor, all 5 drawings that represent the UDP are serialized and saved to your UDP database file locally so the behavior you describe, 'save multiple times', does not sound too surprising.  I think you're correct that background processes may be eating resources on your laptop and it could be struggling as a result.  A reboot and running Stardraw Design 7.3 exclusively will ameliorate resource issues.

Some brief words of explanation/clarification regarding "Not Responding" messages and "crashes".

A crash is the sudden and unexpected termination of an application.  If you experience a crash, i.e. Stardraw Design 7.3 exits without warning and there is no option to send an Error Report, then this would be a cause for concern and we'd like to get to the bottom of it, but, for the record, Stardraw Design 7.3 is exceptionally robust and any crashes encountered in the field are usually the result of a machine-specific issue.

The message "Not Responding" is put up by the operating system when it thinks an application is taking longer than it should to do something.  However, Windows in fact has no idea how long an operation should take so this message is in almost all cases a false positive.  A more useful message for the OS to display, if one were to be required at all, would be "Working... Please wait" so if you do see "Not responding", don't worry: relax and be patient - the operation will complete and the UI will become responsive again.  Try to resist the temptation to click around the screen or do other things in the application because this may buffer additional actions, exacerbating the wait. 

Regarding the 'automatic' addition of Attribute labels to symbols, this is something that has been asked before and it's a big topic with a lot of hidden issues, hence its unavailability to date and the need to edit UDPs to add such labels in a way that suits your purpose.  With the hope that what follows helps to explain some of the issues, a non-exhaustive list is:

• Symbols might be very different shapes and configurations, and UDP symbols can be ANY shape/size/standard (or no recognizable standard at all).
• Some symbols go inside other symbols.
• Different users want to use different Attributes.
• Different users require different standards, like location of the label.
• Some users require multiple labels.
• Is it something to apply to every symbol in a drawing and, if not,  how to specify whether a symbol does/does not have a label (or multiple labels)
• Is it something that should be applied retrospectively to existing (legacy) projects. 
• Is it something to apply to different drawing types?

Kind regards,
Rob Robinson
Stardraw.com