miitchchapman

if i have a wll plate with say 2 x cat 5 and 2 x rg6 as accessories i have to drag each cable into the plan view of visio to show up on my connections report which is quite time cosuming and makes the plan very busy when you have a few of these in a room I'm sure there is a better way way of doing this but cant quite work it out.

All help is greatly appreciated.

fryeguy

Hey Mitch:

Dig around these forums and you will certainly find several ways that other folks handle this. depending on how fully you use or plan to use the functionality of D-Tools may impact your choices. Here are some ideas that may guide you:

In my business we call a plate with 2-cat5 & 2-rg6 a Media Jack.
Consider that the equipment & labor involved in providing a Media Jack exists in multiple phases, usually rough-in & trim. At rough-in you determine the exact location of the jack & hang the low-voltage ring that defines the drywall cut-out. There is equipment and labor associated to the rough-in phase.
Also during the rough-in, the bundle of wire is pulled to your wiring panel location. This is where it gets interesting. Supposing that the only place you need to show the wiring for the Jack is on your RI plan and wiring checklist then make it easy on yourself. Create a wire bundle called "Media Bundle" or "2C5-2RG6" or some other clever name. This can be used on your RI plan and associated checklist.
Then you move on to the Trim phase and locate those parts and some amount of labor.
Now you have an item with accessories including labor by phase that should be accurate. Of course, labor rates will need to be adjusted to help make the labor accurate. We find that .01 hours per foot is often a good starting point. For bundles maybe it goes up a bit. You need to experiment to get the values you would like to see.
So you might say, what about purchase order reports? Yes, on purchase order reports, now you have an item that is really 4 items with at least two SKUs if you are using the same color or 4 SKUs if the colors are different. The answer is, live with it and see how it goes or maybe something else.
What if you decided that the "Media Bundle" wire was from manufacturer "YourCompanyName" and of the Type "Bundle". Then you add the 4 actual wires with actual lengths and actual cost and actual SKUs o the Media Jack item as well. Tell the item to ignore the cost of the "Media Bundle" wire. This gives you an option for filtering the PO report to not include items of Type "Bundle". So your PO would show the 2-cat5 & 2-rg6 but not the "Media Bundle".

this explanation may not be 100% clear but I expect it will give you some ideas of options to pursue.

Good Luck!

gotp

Nice, that confirms i'm doing it the same as someone! LOL
Mine is caled a "TECHDROP" 2 cat6 and 2 RG6.... :-)

fryeguy

So is that to say you use a single wire called TECHDROP that is attached to a plate item? Do you run Pick List reports or some form of PO? How do you handle that?

gotp

Sorry Fryguy, i don't visit this room as often as i should, I have a package called "TD" It includes 2-cat5e and 2-coax,and a carlon box, as a Rough-in phase at 125 feet, and a Leviton 4 hole, 2-RJ45 inserts and two F-inserts, in the trim phase, this way the PO represents all the needed material per phase.

And i have a second package called "TD6" offering Cat6, and upgraded incerts to match.
i love the packages, i need to creat myself a printable catalog next. haven't stoped long enough to creat it. Have you done a printable catalog for your team useing d-tools??

fryeguy

No we haven't done a printable catalog. I'm not sure if I understand the concept.

We do however have a 20 page "Installation Standards Reference Guide" that is wire bound and small enough to fit in your back pocket. It is chock full of information from wiring standards to RF distribution rules of thumb to tech support phone numbers for vendors. Our team loves it!