I wanted to make more topics, each for every question but then I realized that would clog up the forum We (my company) is in early stages of starting using stardraw, it is going slowly, but somehow it is going, and every time i have spare time or more time, I am learning about stardraw and its possibilities. So now I have some problems and that you can help me with i suppose.

1) I went though other topics and found question from question from a member Zuk123, http://forums.stardraw.com/Topic9040.aspx , who has the same problem as me. So i want to make a rack view, you only have red rectangle, and i want to use dwg, but can not do it. Tried everything but nothing works, every-time, dwg that i import in stardraw is to small,or even to big. It is in mm in autocad, i put 1 unit,1 mm in stadraw, and that doesn't work,to small,can't scale,if I put 1 unit-1inch, then its to big, still cant scale. You mentioned in that topic, that its not your goal for us to make products, and that is ok for products that are not in your base, i request product,you make it,although a lot of time can pass before that product is inserted and my project will be over by then maybe, so i would have to draw something. And cause it is a lot easier to draw in autocad, that it is in stardraw, i use autocad,and then i have troubles with importing that in my UDP. But there are a LOT of products with only red rectangles instead of the whole drawing. So what happens then,should we request products that are already in base,to make pictorial and rack diagram? You already put that product,but only block diagram, which is easiest to draw. You don't need more than 10-15 min to make block diagram, i guess,just check the inputs and outputs. I'll give you an example of products that have block diagram but not rack, these are just a few i found today.

Manufacturer: Cloud, products: DCM-1, CXV-425, CXV-225, CX-263, CX-261... And list goes on.. So there are products in base,but not rack views,wasn't looking for pictorial, I am still in the rack view part . Maybe the guys that were making these products were in a hurry, so they only made block diagrams

2) Is there a way for me to make changes in drawings, so that they are permanent? For example, i don't want to change grid spacing every-time. I want to make it 1mm, and that is it, for block schematic. Or to make my unit in rack schematic be mm and not inches? I guess you put the grid spacing by default to be 2.5mm so the input and output connections would be on grid lines?

3) Will there be a scale option?

4) Will there be custom reports like there were in AV2007,and any info of time when will it be possible to try that out? This is very important feature for us.

5) What does width of a line in edit UDP mean,when i put that to 0.5mm, that doesn't translate to 0.5mm when printing. If i want for my line to be 0.5mm on drawing when i print it, how can i achieve that? Is measuring in mm in the drawing in stardraw is in any way connected with the measuring on paper later on print. Or maybe better question, to which size of a paper are those measuring in the drawings? Is it A4, A3? I hope i am clear here,cause i think i confused myself

I realize that your base of products is user request based, but I also expected that for the products that are already in base have all drawings.
I had some more question,but during writing all this, I forgot what i wanted to ask, but it will come to me

If you need any further explanation for my questions,please ask, so i can elaborate better.

Thank you

Hi Uros,

Thank you for your post. I will attempt to answer your symbol–related questions below. Answers to your other questions will follow separately.

“You mentioned in that topic, that its not your goal for us to make products, and that is ok for products that are not in your base, i request product,you make it,although a lot of time can pass before that product is inserted and my project will be over by then maybe, so i would have to draw something.”

There can sometimes be a delay in us publishing your requested symbols which is regrettable. There are many reasons why this happens and I fully appreciate that this can be frustrating as deadlines approach. The time it takes from request to publication of new symbols can vary greatly and can depend on a number of factors such as the manufacturer’s response time to our requests for product information and the number of symbols you’ve requested.

To give you some background on how the symbols request service works: Once you’ve made a request for symbols through the website we contact the manufacturer and request detailed information about their products. In order for us to produce accurate - high detail rack and pictorial symbols we require CAD drawings of the products in question. Obtaining CAD drawings can sometimes be the bottleneck as not all manufacturers are as quick to respond as we would like, we do have very good relationships with hundreds of manufacturers and some respond to our requests very quickly. There are cases where manufacturers are slower to respond with their product information or simply don’t have it to supply. What usually happens when product information is not available immediately is that we will publish generic based symbols. Generic based symbols are simply outlines with text for the Rack and Pictorial environments and are designed as placeholders for the high detail symbols which will ultimately replace them. Note: We always publish accurate block schematic symbols.

“So what happens then,should we request products that are already in base,to make pictorial and rack diagram? You already put that product,but only block diagram, which is easiest to draw. You don't need more than 10-15 min to make block diagram, i guess,just check the inputs and outputs. I'll give you an example of products that have block diagram but not rack, these are just a few i found today.

Manufacturer: Cloud, products: DCM-1, CXV-425, CXV-225, CX-263, CX-261... And list goes on.. So there are products in base,but not rack views,wasn't looking for pictorial, I am still in the rack view part . Maybe the guys that were making these products were in a hurry, so they only made block diagrams ”

No, we don’t need you to request the products again. We know which symbols have been based on generics, we’re constantly chasing manufacturers for data and as soon as we receive it, we will create the high detail rack and pictorial symbols and publish them. Yes, the symbols department is a very busy one indeed, but I can assure you it’s a lack of product information - not time that means we have to publish generics.

We will contact Cloud again to see if their drawings are available. Perhaps you can help? If you carry any weight with any of the manufacturer’s you use, and can contact them yourself and perhaps apply some leverage, this often helps speed things along enormously.

If you ever need to find out the status of generic based symbols or symbols requests in general, please email us at ‘symbols at stardraw dot com’.

I hope this answers your questions about symbols. A response to your other questions will follow.

Kind regards,

Kevin Harrison

I appreciate the time you took to answer me full details. I figured that is the process of making new symbols, but some how I didn't want it to be. Cause Cloud for example does not have dwg drawings on their site like some of the others manufacturers we use. So that is the reason we used to make our own vies just by looking at pdf drawings, and we hoped that you have all those drawings and we wont have to draw it any more. I noticed that you Kevin, answer on every question regarding symbols, and making them,requesting and so on. So maybe you can help me with problem I mentioned in my first post. Can you tell me step to step process of making front view in rack schematic. I already drew some rack vies of some products, and by the time we wait of for you to publish all the views, I would like to use my own. It is drawn in mm in AutoCad. So 1mm on drawing equals like it should 1mm in real life.. And when importing dwg to stardraw, what should i do in first part when program asks me, 1unit=1 what?? Cause in rack drawings, unit on X axis is not the same s the unit on Y axis. And i always have really small device when I import it from autocad..Then when I import it, i copy it and paste in edit symbol section? If rack front view is the drawing, I go to rack drawing, front view, and paste there. But symbol is so small..I can do step by step of what i am doing and then send you the result. Or even i can send you my dwg, and you try,and tell me what to do..

Still waiting for the answer on other questions Hope you will get back to me soon..

Hi Uros,

I hope to answer the rest of your questions;

1) Using DWGs to create your own symbols: when you import a DWG, SD7 asks you to set the value of a Unit. In AutoCAD a Unit (of measurement) can be anything e.g. 1 inch, 1 millimeter, 1 foot, 1 meter, 4 inches, 5km etc and what the Unit is is not stored within the DWG - this is why it has to be entered manually.

Note that the Unit definition has nothing to do with the destination drawing, and only applies to the Unit setting of the original DWG.

If the DWG comes in too small (or too large), assuming it is drawn to 1:1 scale, the Unit setting must be wrong. You can check this by taking a known measurement, e.g. the width of a rackmount product (19"), and use the Dimension tool in SD7 to draw a dimension against that known length. If, for example, you set the Unit = 1 inch and the Dimension you've drawn shows 1.583" when you know it should be 19", the import is 1/12th the size it should be. You can then re-import using 1 Unit = 1 Feet and the import will be the correct size.

It might be useful if we could see the DWG that is causing you problems - please email it to techsupport @ stardraw . com and we will be happy to analyze it.

2) Making permanent changes to default document settings: No, you cannot change the defaults for new drawings based on supplied templates. These defaults have been defined to give the best possible experience when working in the set environments and to change them would cause you problems later. For example, the default grid setting in Rack Layouts is 1" wide and 1.75" (1RU) high. If you change this, symbols will not sit in racks properly.

You can change the document defaults in any drawing using the Properties grid, for example you can set the Drawing Unit to Millimetres to display dimensions etc in mm, but this applies only to the current drawing and not to any new drawings based on the stock template.

3) Yes, our roadmap includes resize functionality.

4) You can export and use all data from your project in any way you want - from the Products view choose File | Export and choose Excel Files (*.xls) in the Save as Type dropdown. You can them customize this data any way you want using Excel (similar to AV2007, but more flexible).

5) Line width: the drawing you create is done in 'world-space', and all measurements are defined in this 'world-space'. So in the world space, the line of a line might be 1m, and its width might be 0.5mm. When you print, 'world-space' co-ordinates are translated to 'device-space' (i.e. the paper in the printer) so in the same way that the length of the line will be translated to fit on the page, e.g. it might be 200mm when measured on the page, so the width of the line will be 'scaled' in the same way. You can only set 'world-space' measurements in SD7.

I hope this is helpful.

Kind regards,
Rob Robinson
Stardraw.com

Hi Rob, thanks for the answers. I think you maybe misunderstood me in some questions, ill try to explain.

Regarding reports. This is my process and process of my company. We have our own base, with all the products we use, with prices,descriptions and such. Every product has his own item number. So what we would like to do, is export all products that are in stardraw, but only quantity and item number. Then in our base, we will match item numbers and in that way can make specification with desired descriptions and such. Why should we waste time with populating stardraw base with all informations about products when we already have that in our base.

Export from products list, gives me whole lot of unnecessary details,and doesn't give me what I need. Would be perfect if i could export excel file similar like cost summary. So one column would be quantity, one item number, one manufacturer, doesn't matter what more, i would like to make my own report. Maybe just with quantity and item number. Then when we import that in our base, everything else would be populated,and i would have my specification ready.

So to make it shorter, i want to make report in excel with just 2 columns, or maybe if find later that we need more, we can make more, which I can later import somewhere else.

Regarding line weights and printing. Maybe I am missing something, but how can I choose how big my drawing is going to be. Cause as I saw now, it is always scaled to the size of papir and format in which I am printing. For example, i have just a couple of products, i make block schematic, and I don't want those products to be like half of A4 paper,because he scaled it that way, I want them to be in size i want to make them, just so everything can be readable. Not 2 block with the size of a mobile phone if only two are in drawing, just two blocks with sizes that can be readable with no difficulties.

So dimensions in stardraw are some dimensions in their own world, and are always resized depending on device and size of paper I am printing. Is there a way to for me to know, or how can i do that if there is, to make different line weights of lines, and for that to be always the same when printing. For example, in autocad, if i make one line wheigt 0.5mm, and second one 0.2mm,when i print those blocks,nevermind the size of paper, it is always 0.5mm and 0.2mm. True, i made those setting in printing section in autocad, but i didnt find that in stardraw. Stardraw printing tool is like office word.All i have from options, is print, either is portrait, landscape and stuff like that.

Again sorry for long post, and i hope you understood my problems.

I will send you my rack drawing of cloud i have troubles fitting in.

Thank you.

Hi Uros,

Reporting - currently reports are not customizable, but you can do exactly want you want using the Excel export process. In Excel you'd just delete the columns you don't want and use Excel's Subtotal function to generate quantities.

Printing - yes, printing in SD7 is simpler than ACAD. If you want to control the size of symbols as they print (within or independent of a Title Block) you can include a non-printing object like a white rectangle to define what is, in effect, the page outline; SD7 will then include this rectangle in its calculation of fit-to-page scaling.

Unfortunately there is no easy way to define the printed width of a line - to my knowledge, no user has ever asked us for this capability before.

Kind regards,
Rob Robinson
Stardraw.com