Kind regards,
Rob Robinson
Stardraw.com

Hi Rob,

We have designed a large project involving ​approx. 120 links between rooms, hence 120 to and from feathers. With this many feathers it becomes very time consuming and frustrating managing almost all aspects of feathers, from creation, to resolving duplicate ID's. Can I therefore put some suggestions forward;

- Auto pair of feathers, i.e. if a 'to' or 'from' feather is created, it immediately creates its opposite partner somewhere else on the page (or with the option to place on a different page) and that automatically has the same ID, with the ability to lock this so that no duplicate ID's can be accidentally created.

- Any change that is then made to either the 'to' or 'from' ​​feather will automatically change its partner. For instance, if I change the Label on the 'to' feather it automatically changes the label on the 'from' feather. This may sound strange but we label both feathers with the same ID number and it doubles the time to make the necessary changes.

- A way of easily finding the other end of a feather as Ray suggested, e.g. by using a 'show me' button which takes you directly to its partner or by clearly highlighting the other end

- Some way of showing where duplicate ID's are located. Again with this many feathers it's time consuming to find where the duplicates are. Maybe with the above suggestions, having a way of locking feathers to one another will prevent the need for this anyway.

Thanks

Tim​​​​​​​​​

Hi Tim,

Thanks for your post - we shall certainly factor your suggestions into planning for ongoing enhancements and improvements to Stardraw Design 7..


Kind regards,
Rob Robinson
Stardraw.com

I 100% agree and second all of these requests.
One more feature request for feathers. Auto cable label should label the ends of the “feathered” cable such that the cable ends at the source and destination get the same label automatically (no searching to find the corresponding feather or accidentally creating a different cable number). I find that a cable label at the feather end is not useful.

I'd like to add a couple more thoughts and suggestions for consideration as well (although I'm fairly new to SD7 so take these with a grain of salt):

I may be in the minority, but I don't necessarily want the other end of the feather created when I make the first side. While this might help alleviate the issue of duplicate ID's, it's not convenient when you're working with a device(s) that have multiple I/O that you're making feathers for and want to create all the feathers on one side first before moving to another device/cable to create the other end, especially if that's on another page.

To help keep track of feather ID's I could imagine a system somewhat like (or even using) the "Available Symbols" currently in place, where when one end of a feather is placed in a drawing and given an ID, the matching end shows up immediately as an "Available" asset that can be placed, already with matching ID assigned.

I don't agree that feathers should be forced to have the same label on both sides as was suggested previously. At minimum (especially between pages) they should indicate "From XX" and "To XX" (e.g. "To Pg.3 B"/"From Pg.1 B" or "To Control Room"/"From Stage"). I suppose theoretically, however, you could have a "Linked" checkbox on the feather label properties that would allow customers that want matched labels to do so and be able to modify it from either end.

I will agree being able to see/find duplicate feather ID's would be helpful, as well as knowing what ID's are already in use (some of this can be accomplished by running a cable report, but it would be much better to have this in-app instead of having to run reports to get it; I'm also not sure how the report handles a feather ID that has more than a single to/from associated). I also agree being able to "jump" from one side of a feather to the other side would be pretty handy.

Hi Garrett,

Thanks for adding your thoughts - your feedback is very useful and appreciated.


Kind regards,
Rob Robinson
Stardraw.com