Hey Guys, it occurs to me that many of the issues I've been having with SD and cables (and also issues raised by others in other posts on the forum) have to do with the fact that SD doesn't treat cables as products in the software. But cables ARE products. They have manufacturers, model numbers, costs, etc. They are more than just the line on the drawing.

Some background: Previously, working in Visio, I would add a cable to my drawing, set the GRAPHICAL attributes I wanted (like color, line style, arrows, etc) and then save the cable to my stencil as what type of cable it is. So I have a "Video Cables" stencil (library), and I can drag and drop each type of cable when I need a 6 foot VGA, or a 9 foot DVI, etc. Then I connect the ends where I want, or move the cable segments so it fits my drawing. I can easily save it as a particular manufacturer and model number too. Then when I print a report, Visio tells me I have 5 Extron DVI 201 extenders, and ALSO 5 '6ft DVIGEAR DVI-D' cables on that page. This is a very quick way of working as it captures both the graphical elements of the lines on the drawing and the attributes of the physical, real world equipment.

You can't do this in SD. While you can make a product out of anything, even my cable line, doing so breaks the "cable-ness". Rubberbanding doesn't work, ends don't connect, and the attributes are Product Attributes rather than Cable Attributes. The selection tool and cable label tool break too.

In a related case, you can't include cable in a UDP without breaking its 'cable-ness'. A good example would be a UDP for Cat5 extenders. I want to have the pair, connected with the appropriate cable, saved as a product. Then I could drag and drop the Extron DVI201 Tx/Rx pair (which has it's own part number, by the way) onto the drawing, move the symbols until they were GRAPHICALLY where I want, assign a length to the cat 5 cable, and I'm done. One D & D, one attribute update, compared to the multitude of clicks, drags, edits, selections, etc. that are needed now. Another good example is the Tandberg C60 video conference integrator kit. One part number, many parts, always used together but rearranged graphically to fit the drawing. And a third example is equipment with attached cable of some length. There is no way now to extend that cable tail on the drawing, without adding a new line for a cable, and noting in the attributes that the cable you've just added really is part of something and not a separate cable.

Having the ability to generate a cable library, in the same way we generate product libraries would be a tremendous time saver.

Being able to include cable in a UDP and still have it behave as a cable would help my productivity too.

I realize I could do this myself by building a project with the systems and groups of products I use ofter, that can then be cut and pasted into my active drawing. But that is more complication, another file to maintain versions of, and I would be constantly stepping in and out of my workflow on my primary project drawing.

The ability to treat cables as the products that they actually are, would seem to be a very desirable feature in a tool like SD.

zuk

Hi Zuk,

Thanks for your post.

Yes, absolutely, some cables are products (in the 'traditional' sense) - typically pre-made ones - and support for cables as products (in the SD7 sense) is on our roadmap. Cables are already special and not just lines on the page; they support labels, other special Attributes and can generate a Cable Schedule. Applying 'product status' is a natural extension in many (though not all) cases.

Similarly we appreciate the requirement for collections of products/cables etc that could be inserted into a project or drawing in a single action while retaining the unique characteristics of their components. We think of these as 'assemblies'; again, on the roadmap.

Kind regards,
Rob Robinson
Stardraw.com