Eris,

Perhaps I do not understand the steps you are having to take to position your labels.

Firstly, I believe that no matter what we do - you will want the labels somewhere else.

So, what steps do you have to take to move a label ?

I think it is F5 (to turn off the snap to grid), drag the cable label to where you want and hit F5 to turn the snap to grid back on again.

Do I mis-understand the problems?

David Snipp
Stardraw.com Ltd

Hi David,

Thanks for the clear explanation, I understand now your issues with the auto label settings. I wish there were a happy middle ground that I could suggest.
I never had any issues with the previous cable settings at all. However I do agree that in standard Schematic situations the labeling will go smoother, I still am faced with lots of extra work anytime I don't want the label directly on the cable (which in many of my drawings is a common place occurrence) and when I do want to align the labels away from the cable it is now very tedious to make it visually clean since there is no longer an alignment option.

-Eris Fellmeth

Fellmeth@controLED.de

The problem with exposing the cable label alignment so that it is seperately settable is that if you move the cable, then the label alignment will get reset because the cable is "smart" and tries to align the cable labels for you automatically whenever you re-size the cable.

It really comes down to who is God? The manual setting that you specify or the setting that the cable thinks is right? I'd prefer to make the cable a little more intelligent to cover those edge cases rather than dumb the whole thing down or frustrate future users who will complain that the cable label orientation keeps getting lost.

I'm sure you know that if all you want to do is put some text on a diagram to indicate some information to your client, then you could just use the plain old Text tool - or, of course, just move the cable label to where you want it to be

David Snipp
Stardraw.com Ltd

Hi David,
Thank you for your patience with my some-what unorthodox usages.

Yes, vertical connections are something that we often use, especially with 24 & 48 Port switches (which we use allot!)

Also a great reason for why we use StarDraw, is to convey wire-run diagrams to companies hundreds of miles away. To do this the drawings must be easy to read and very pictorial.
Using CAD Dwg home layouts we recreate wire runs, cable labels, TV locations, spkr locations so on and so forth.

Please take a look at the following attached screen shots to see what I mean (these Cable run diagrams are very important to us; in fact we won't even commence a Schematic drawing until the architect approves the locations and the electricians or who ever is pulling the cables also approves).

thanks,

-Eris Fellmeth

Fellmeth@controLED.de

Eris,

So, is this only a problem because you have vertical connections?

The Stardraw Data Specification of Symbols for the Block Schematic Environment have no vertical connections. Inputs are on the left and Outputs are on the right.

Is the only change you want to do is if the segment is vertical, then the associated label should be centered?

David Snipp
Stardraw.com Ltd

Hi David,

I'm a big fan of the new changes regarding labels defaulting to the inner part of the cable. It's so much better than before.
Still my work load it much more with out the ability to align to center, left or right

Check out my screen shot.

-Eris Fellmeth

Fellmeth@controLED.de

Eris,

We've made some further tweaks to the automatic cable label alignment that should fix the issues you have reported.

Please test and let us know if you find any other problems.

David Snipp
Stardraw.com Ltd

Hi David,

I've tested out the new update, and I'm currently finishing up a drawing with the new features.
I must say that I am very impressed that you guys had managed to fix the glitch and release the update; within 24 hours!

However I really underestimated the importance of label alignment... My work load is now so much more, since I must by hand grab and center all the labels using the snap-settings (or disabling the snap settings). At first I thought that copying my cables then appending changes would work just fine; but still, when many labels contain a different amount of charters (Letters &/or numbers) centering them to (for example) vertical cables, is very time consuming.
Where as before I would only need to select center.

As well, it seems now that label positioning depends on the direction that the cable is drawn.
The start Labels always align Left and the end Labels are always align right. Therefore cables drawn from Left to Right will have Labels on the inside and cables drawn for Right to Left will have labels on the outside.



-Eris Fellmeth

Fellmeth@controLED.de

Eris,

I'm pleased to say that we have now published an update to Stardraw Design 7 that fixes the glitch that you reported regarding positioning cable labels beyond the end of horizontal cables.

David Snipp
Stardraw.com Ltd

Eris,

Thanks for reporting this.

We are working on a fix for positioning the start and end labels beyond the horizontal extents of the cable.

As discussed on the phone, you don't have a requirement to manually set the alignments of each of the cable labels.

David Snipp
Stardraw.com Ltd